Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Lying With Polls

McCain quotes today's NBC/WSJ poll:

Despite the country's struggling economy and vocal opposition to some of his policies, President Obama's favorability rating is at an all-time high. . .

And proceeds to expose the chicanery.

What Murray doesn't tell the reader until the 15th paragraph is who was polled to get these results:

...the poll — which was conducted of 1,007 adults from Feb. 26 to March 1

...The pollster, Peter Hart, and the folks at NBC/WSJ who commissioned the poll are not so stupid that they don't understand the importance of the distinction between "random adults" and actual voters.

Anyone who knows anything about public opinion polling knows that non-voters are different than voters

...So when news organization commission random-adult polls about political questions, the results will always skew substantially leftward, giving the false impression that Democrats and liberal policies are more popular than they actually are among actual voters

...And the fact that Murray buried in the 15th paragraph the fact that the NBC/WSJ poll was of random adults tells you that he understands, and wishes to conceal, the essential bogusness of the result

No! Really??

3 comments:

Amy said...

If this is the same poll, the breakdown of the respondents is so telling:

Strong Democrat: 23
Not very strong Democrat: 8
Independent/lean Democrat: 12
Strictly Independent: 20
Independent/lean Republican: 10
Not very strong Republican: 7
Strong Republican: 13
Other (VOL): 4
Not sure: 3

So there are 13% more people who identified as Democrat/lean Democrat than those who identified as Republican/lean Republican.

(Source: http://sweetness-light.com/archive/poll-obama-still-gets-strong-support)

Skew, skew, skew...

Jay Bullock said...

Wait wait wait. You're telling me that non-voters are not allowed to have opinions on things?

Dad29 said...

Precisely WHERE did I say that, Jay?

Nevermind.

Of course they can have opinions. But since they don't vote:

1) They are irrelevant, and
2) They skew Left.