A huge Canadian Press/Harris-Decima poll conducted last week (which was largely ignored by the Canadian media), revealed that 25% more Canadians were "avid" fans of the CFL, than were "avid" fans of the NFL.
10% of Canadians consider themselves avid CFL fans, while only 8% are avid NFL fans. 25% of Canadians are occasional CFL followers, while 22% occasionally followed the NFL.
35% of Canadians said they were likely to watch the Grey Cup, while 34% said they'll likely watch the Super Bowl.
"It's remarkable that as many Canadians are as interested in watching the CFL as are interested in watching the NFL," pollster Allan Gregg said. "That's impressive when you consider the promotional muscle that's behind the NFL game. That is clearly grounded and anchored by that enthusiasm and sense of fealty that flows from Western Canada."
Here is the regional breakdown of those surveyed who intended to watch last Sunday's Grey Cup:
Man/Sask 59%
Alberta 50%
BC 37%
Ontario 29%
Atlantic 22%
(Note: No numbers for Quebec were published and the poll is unavailable on the H-D website)
The survey questioned over 2000 Canadians, which is a huge number and is accurate within 2%. This is double the number of people normally surveyed for political polls in Canada. The Canadian media routinely publishes surveys during Super Bowl weekend comparing the NFL and CFL interest, with similar results.
Like I said, a survey of over 2000 Canadians is a huge poll. It is accurate within 2%, 19 times out of 20. Most political surveys in Canada only poll 1000 people and can accurately predict election results within fractions. No survey in the history of mankind ever polled a million people.
To highlight the importance of Ontario to CFL fortunes, while 29% of Ontarian's intended to watch the Grey Cup, that represented over 3,770,000 people...while 59% of Sask/Man residents totals 1,319,000 viewers.
Total numbers in each province who intended to watch the Grey Cup:
2000 is a respectable sample set. Most political polls are usually only around 1000 people, which leads to an error of about 4%. So 2000 for a sports poll is pretty good.
edit: oops, I didn’t read the post two up, which said the same thing… :oops:
No prob DMPC, we were typing at the same time... It is amazing how consistent the populace is and how accurately you can project trends with only a small sample.
Sample sizes is a pretty basic concept, and you don't have to have a sample size of 1,000,000 to get accurate results. Granted, it isn't as basic a concept as counting to 13.
The idea is that these 2000 people represent a random sampling of the general population of Canadians. Yes, it's a small number relative to the total number of Canadians, but it can be proven mathematically that there is an extremely low probability (hence the 2% margin of error) that the opinions of these 2000, as long as they are sampled randomly, will be significantly different from the general population.
Yes, it would be slightly more accurate to sample 1 million Canadians, but the costs of doing so are prohibitive.
Have you ever studied statistics? A random sample of 2000 from 32 million will yield results within 2% like the article says. This is also why they can call election results in ridings when only 10 of 50 ballot boxes have been counted. Once you have a certain sample size, if the data was collected correctly, the trend will propagate...
Its not worth it to invest 50 times the resources to improve the accuracy by 1 or 2%.
BBM Canada said that almost 43% of Canadians watched part or all the Grey cup it is more then the survey showed.
True, but if you watched the Grey Cup at all, you are included of the 14 million who watched the game. But in a survey, those short-term viewers probably indicated they weren't planning to watch the game, but while channel-surfing on Sunday they perhaps got drawn in because the score was so close.
The survey showed over 9 million English Canadians intended to watch the game. There were probably another 3 million Grey Cup viewers in Quebec who were not listed in the survey results.
Any idea on the number of viewers in the USA? I was glued to it. For the limited number of stations that showed it live compared to the regular season games. Lots of stations showed it on delayed telecast hours after the game. I found a stasion on my sons provider that had it live so I went there to watch the game. Numbers I can immagine were not high due to the lack of live broadcasting.
It is amazing how consistent the populace is and how accurately you can project trends with only a small sample.