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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Is Arthur Andersen Tallying the Poll Numbers, Too? |
Current rating: 0 |
by Alan Bisbort
(No verified email address) |
21 Jul 2002
Modified: 08:54:13 AM |
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Am I the only one who, when it comes to polls, feels like he's on LSD? Take Bush's "approval rating" ...please. |
Despite a recession, despite undefined "war" that is slowly becoming a Vietnam-like quagmire, despite a USA Patriot Act that is the first step to a Gestapo takeover, despite a bloated defense budget at a time when all other aspects of the national budget are strip-mined, despite revelations that every member of his Cabinet with the exception of Colin Powell is a corrupt, lying corporate lapdog, Bush's "approval ratings" are consistently high.
Surely, the pollsters are not talking to any black people or any poor people or any people who can't afford health insurance or prescription medicine. Surely, anyone who has seen their stock money disappear into the pockets of Bush's CEO pals, anyone with a 401 (K) plan, anyone who cares about the environment, anyone who is pro-choice, anyone against war and capital punishment is not going to "approve" of the president's job. Do polls ever indicate how many people hang up in the face of the pollster who calls? (Answer: No). Perhaps an interesting and surely more telling poll would be one that gives a political snapshot of people most likely to stay on the line when a pollster calls.
The question begged by Bush's barely scathed approval ratings is this: Who are these blocs of people sitting beside their TVs, telephones and computer terminals voting en masse at the first signal from their fellow travelers? More simply: Have you ever known anyone contacted by a political pollster? Me neither. I've known plenty of people who've been called for jury duty. I've even met a couple people who've won lottery payouts and casino jackpots. But I've never met anyone who has been polled. Ever. Speaking of specious polls, check out the one conducted by Fox News called "Bush Confronts Corporate Cheats," (thanks to Eric at Hamster.com). By its title alone, it is tilted in Bush's favor. As most Wall Street pundits, including conservative Lou Dobbs, insisted after Bush's speech, his meaningless gesture did not confront tax cheats at all, but undermined desperately needed reform. And yet, here's Fox's poll question. "Do you approve of the president's plan to crack down on corporate cheats?" They are already taking it as fact that the plan will "crack down" (it won't), and they've worded the question so that to answer "No" means you're in favor of corporate cheats. It is the equivalent of asking -- from the opposite political perspective: "Would you vote for Bush today if you knew that, despite having enough intelligence to prevent it, he would allow a terrorist attacks to occur on American soil, killing 3,000 American civilians?"
Naturally, Fox's poll results were 89 percent "Yes," 6 percent "No." A recent Advocate poll, on the other hand, found that viewers who depend on Fox for their news are either conservative (89 percent) or insane (6 percent). As Harry O'Neill, veteran pollster with Roper Starch Worldwide, has said, "Every poll is commissioned for a reason, either to gather information or to advance a cause or point of view. Instant polls include only viewers, not the whole public. In addition, they include only those viewers who can be reached quickly, since there is no time for callbacks. The result is a biased, unreliable sample. And polls released on a particular issue or piece of pending legislation may be intended to sway public opinion or to legitimate a company's point of view."
Here's another example, found on the religious site, Ecclesiastic Commonwealth Community (www.ecclesia.org). Their poll question was, "More than six months has passed since the 9-11 disaster. Whom do you honestly believe actually caused and was the major force behind the destruction of the World Trade Center?" After 5,682 votes, the results broke down as: Osama bin Laden (4.4 percent) 250 votes; American militias (0.3 percent) 18; White House (21.9 percent) 1243; Pentagon (1.1 percent) 65; The Taliban and al-Qaida (18.2 percent) 1035 votes; Sadaam Hussein (Iraq) (3.9 percent) 224; New World Order (48.0 percent) 2728; other (2.1 percent) 119. And yet, two hours later, the results took a dramatic turn. All of the categories were up anywhere from 11 percent to 34 percent, but the "Taliban/al-Qaida" category zoomed 251 percent, garnering 2,600 votes. When alerted of this surge, the site discovered that the poll had been "hacked" via "an AOL server near Langley, Virginia. He got in by using a Java script we haven't seen before."
If the CIA is hacking a tiny religious site to skew poll results the way they want, what sort of hacking is going on with the ubiquitous polls that are trumpeted nightly on the mainstream, corporate, status quo "news" networks?
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interesting examples |
by Searcher
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Jul 2002
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The quotes from Faux News polls are a great example of how unscientific polls push particular viewpoints by asking loaded or leading questions.
On the subject of who takes part, I've never been called by a pollster of any sort, but I'm regularly asked by Zogby to take part in one of their polls via the net.
Zogby's polls, which are carefully randomized and stratified to provide a more representative sample than the sort of thing indulged in by FAux and their ilk, and which take pains to avoid "stacking" their questions, currently indicate that Dubya's approval ratings are dropping and that a substantial proportion of the population feels that they are worse off or no better off than two or three years ago.
As for the "hacked" poll, a poll with a totally self-selected sample isn't worth a shit to begin with. |
