College football brings people and communities together no wonder there is so much interest around college teams and their performance. Well, the decision to keep the people of New Jersey entertained through college football is likely to take a new turn as the people take a vote. All registered voters living in New Jersey will get an opportunity to exercise democracy to the test.
The outcome of the vote will determine whether college sports be made an item in sports betting platforms. If the latest FDU Poll result is anything to go by, the chances that the amendment will make it to the next stage are rather slim. In that poll, the voters were against allowing sports betting for college football by a margin of 2 to 1.
From the results, it emerged that one quarter of all the voters who had cast their ballot were in support of a constitutional change. Not surprisingly, the majority of the voters who said yes we’re young adults who lack a college education and are aligned to the Republicans.
While the supporters of the bill see nothing wrong in having people bet legally on college sports, there are many others who are not sure of where to place their bet. According to a government and politics professor at the Fairleigh Dickinson University who is also the poll’s Executive Director, the supporters need to work extra hard to influence a yes vote.
The results of the polls show that the greatest support went to keeping college events banned from betting while 25% and 26% went to allowing and not sure respectively. While the law that permits betting on sports in New Jersey has been in place since 2018, it expressly prohibits people on placing bets on sports events held at educational institutions. This means that those who placed bets on the basketball teams that participated in the NCAA broke the law.
It does not matter that the national tournament in which they took part was held outside New Jersey. When state legislative representatives in New Jersey were presented with the law amendment, 3:1 voted in favor of balloting in November. At the time when legislatures were passing the bill to have betting legalized in New Jersey, reasons why college sports were exempted include max fixing.
The thinking at the time was that athletes who play in college teams do not receive any monetary compensation for it. If the matches they played in needed to end in a certain way to gain some people, these players could very easily receive a bribe.
Today, many students who form college sports teams are paid – it is about time that there should be an amendment to the initial law. If you go around asking voters why they choose to vote in a certain way, the majority just tend to vote in support of the status quo.
Obviously, there is s resistant to change in areas where people do not seem to have much understanding of the subject at hand. Supporters now have to explain their position to those who hold a contrary opinion in the hope that they will buy into their ideas.
What we cover
The methodology of the survey
The survey was conducted for a period of 8 days and the sample size was derived from a list of certified voters who were registered to vote in New Jersey. There was a random selection of participants from the list of voters who were then contacted. 608 were contacted through text message to notify them of the survey and invite them to take the survey online by launching a provided link on their phone browsers. The remaining respondents who totaled up to 195 were contacted by telephone and asked the questions on the spot.
Since the survey covers a field of business that is illegal to persons under the age of 18 years, all the people whose responses were considered had attained 18 years by the time of the survey. The research company that undertook the entire survey process was Braun Research, Inc. who is based in Princeton, New Jersey.
In both mediums of data collection, the interviewees used English to respond to the survey. The data collected was taken to be a true representation of the registered voter population of the state of New Jersey.
Like all weights used in sampling of data, the weights used for this survey were intended to iron out the various demographic components of the college sports betting survey so as to match to the various population parameters. In the weighting of results, parameters such as age, sex, race and ethnicity were considered.
The main data analysis tool used in breaking down the data collected from this survey was SPSS. SPSSINC RAKE is an extension of the program that is used to simultaneously balance the variables as they appear on a distribution table. The GENLOG procedure is used for this process and again when producing the final weights.
The purpose of trimming the weights is so that individual interviews do not have undue influence on the end results. It is important to use these weights in statistical analysis of survey data so as to maintain the unique characteristics of the target population. The weight sizes are used in constructing design effects that provide a true picture of the level of weight application in manipulation of data.
In simple terms, design effects are instrumental in communicating the role of extra respondents used in the various weighted categories. If the design effects are large, it could be an indication that there is massive underrepresentation in the just concluded survey.
Survey errors
Every survey is reported with a certain degree of sampling error which indicates the human error involved in conducting surveys as opposed to scientific sampling. The margin of error should be adjusted to accommodate the effects of data weighting that in the long run matches with the population. In this current poll, the sampling error was +/-3.46with a confidence level of 95%.
