Parsing The Polls
Mark Tapscott looks at the latest poll results from the Washington Post and finds them a bit questionable.
Reading today's edition of The Washington Post, it might appear to casual readers that the American people are depressed, fed up with President Bush and the GOP, and heading rapidly left on the issues. But look at the actual numbers behind the Dan Balz and Jon Cohen byline and a very different picture emerges from the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll.
Any credible analysis of this survey should be prefaced with a basic caution about its usefulness for predicting how people are going to vote a year from now. The caution is the fact the survey is of adults, not likely voters.
Even so, here's how Balz and Cohen see the numbers:
"Concern about the economy, the war in Iraq and growing dissatisfaction with the political environment in Washington all contribute to the lowest public assessment of the direction of the country in more than a decade. Just 24 percent think the nation is on the right track, and three-quarters said they want the next president to chart a course that is different than that pursued by Bush."
But a veteran GOP analyst sees something else in the 24 percent right track figure:
"That’s only a one-point drop from June and a two-point drop from January. So considering the three-point margin of error in the poll, it’s reasonable to conclude that the right track/wrong track numbers are actually unchanged since January. Although unchanged this year, the right track number is down by more than a third (from 39 to 24) since right before the election when Democrats took over the Congress (coincidence?)."
And there's this as well:
"Also unchanged in the poll were the President’s approval numbers. His approval is the same as it was in the two September polls, the same as in July and the same as it was in the January poll (though the number who 'strongly' approve ticked up two points since the last poll). Some months it goes a little higher, but this is the fourth straight Washington Post-ABC poll with the same numbers, despite the summer campaign against him and his party."
Spin/counterspin? Well, sure it is to some extent. But there are real reasons for concern in the polling data. Also real reasons for optimism. Any Democrat who actually reads the poll - as opposed to the spun story in the Post - should be worried. The poll, even stinking as it does of a push poll, indicates that Democrats are not in as strong a position as they would have you believe. As always, a poll is not useful - in and of itself - as anything more than a snapshot of the day the poll was taken. The trend data, however, is of greater interest. Those trends are treading against Democrats.
By Americaneocon, Sunday, 4 November , 2007 @ 11:27 pm
I’ve cut through recent polling numbers myself.
There’s some silver lining for the GOP in a lot of the data. Iraq sentiment is improving. Also, voters are not so much shifting to the Dems as they are looking for change. Finally, the presidential race will be tight, no matter which candidates win the nominations. Campaigns will matter (look for swiftboating on all sides), and the ground game will be key as well.
Nice posting!
By Mwalimu Daudi, Sunday, 4 November , 2007 @ 11:33 pm
It is interesting that the MSM is trotting out push polls this early.
BTW: According to some recent commenters here - we are now living in a totalitarian mind-control dictatorship. So when will the Bush administration clamp down on the press to prevent them from reporting negative poll results like this? When can we expect the Bush administration to launch a full-scale crackdown on the First Amendment under the guise of the “Fairness Doctrine” and “campaign finance reform”? Likewise, when will we see 41 Republican Senators trying to intimidate broadcasters into removing talk radio from the airwaves? Not to mention a GOP Congress threatening ABC into altering it’s documentary The Path to 9/11 so as to avoid embarrassing high-ranking administration officials.
OOOPS - I forgot – those are Democrat positions. Forget what I just said. In fact – come to think of it, these were actually attempts by Democrats to restore our freedoms. As all intelligent people know, the best way to preserve civil liberties is for a wise and kind Democrat Congress to keep us from exercising them in the first place. What is never used will never be lost, right?