At 22:11 04/02/02 +0000, Miriam Yagud wrote:
>If you take into account the probability that at least 10% of those voting
>are lesbians and gay men the number of heterosexual women voting is likely
>to be nearer 70% and given that one of the finalists is a gay man we might
>also assume that a larger than usual number of gay men might be voting for
>him, which reduces the het women group still further.
I'm not sure that I fully understand that arithmetic! If, for the purpose
of the argument, we accept the figure I mentioned of 90% of voters being
female, then (making all sorts of assumptions!) lesbians account (using
your 10%) for 10% of that 90% (i.e. about 9%), whilst gay men presumably
account for about one tenth of the other 10% (i.e. about 1% of
voters). In terms of 'sexual preference' we would then therefore
presumably have 82% attracted to men (81% het women + 1% gay men) and 18%
attracted to women (9% het men and 9% lesbians). Given that 82:18 ratio,
voting would only have to be moderately biased by 'sexual preference' in
order to ensure a male victory.
>But where does this leave heterosexual men? what do we know about their
>voting habits? do they vote for men or women in these matters? are they
>voting?
As I said, the 'rumour' (wherever from) is that only approximately 10% of
the voters are male (which, with your assumption, means that about 9% are
heterosexual males) - which really means that how they vote is pretty
irrelevant. The 'best case' (minimum 'bias') is that mentioned above, with
ALL of them voting for women. At the other extreme, if all heterosexual
men voted for MEN (and everyone else voted per their 'sexual preference'),
there would be even more dramatic 'bias' - 91:9, with only lesbians voting
for female contestants!
Adding complications, as you say, some of the contestants have not been
heterosexual - and one might, of course, hypothesise that heterosexual
females might be biased towards heterosexual male contestants and/or
against male homosexual ones. However, the evidence of last week's voting
is that the female (predominantly heterosexual) vote was split almost
exactly evenly between the heterosexual and homosexual male finalist - so
I'm not sure that hypothesis would hold any water.
Not exactly a life-changing topic, but those are my thoughts!
Kind Regards
John
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