The Gift That Keeps Giving
The polls are always misleading. Not conspiracy level misleading…I don’t think the Pew to Gallop polls are in bed with the liberals, but the way the media interprets these polls is often misleading.
Rich Galen covers the basics of the poll released by USA Today/Gallup.
When polls are bad, we (who are in the business of making the best of a bad situation) view them as minor irritations, sepia-toned, ragged-edged photographs, blurry in their detail, lacking in any depth.
When polls are good, though, hoo boy! They are the most important thing in the world; richly-pained tapestries, perfectly formed, sharpened to a scalpel’s edge, the data jumping out in three-dimensional glory.
So today…based on yesterday’s news of the President only having a 7 Point gap (44% approval, 51% disapproval) and the Republicans neck and neck with the Democrats (48%)…I’m going to deviate from the flock and say…This poll sucks! Obviously it’s a lie…a blatant lie. The American people are smarter than that, and how dare they have to put up with the biased conservative media! I don’t know anyone who likes George Bush, and I wasn’t called for the poll…as a matter of fact…I’m going to make a T-Shirt with the Gallup logo, and underneath it put “Not My Poll”.
The only people who have time to answer these polls are lonely red state hacks! Liberal anger…done and done.
The wonder of Photoshop.
I have never been called…and I actually vote.
I see what you’re doing here, but I don’t see why.
But to veer slightly, why only discuss the Bush approval polls? There are so many other polls that fluctuate, taken more frequently, involving very key matters. Just a suggestion, but something tells me that the accumulation of those other polls would narrow the margin of error on Bush’s approval poll and give you a different, more solid number to temporarily rely on.
I get that the polls are going up…I just have a problem with the whole poll process, who takes them, the way the questions are worded, and who interprets them. They’re like a Michael Moore documentary…they know most of the answers they want before they even start filming.
To take the as a whole approach…the numbers are going up, but to analyze the results…republicans vote as a higher percentage anyways, so the numbers are in reality skewed low, as polls are taken of “likely voters” and not actual voters. The last two statements of mine however have no veracity anyways, being based on polls.
I agree that we can “rely”, as much as that holds water, on a moving average by several different sources, but to jump at one, and disregard others (as both sides do when they like the results) just seems like a waste of energy…best example is exit polls in the 04 election.
Deriving anything of concrete value from Polls is at best statistical extrapolation and at it’s worst, The GOSH AWFUL “TRUTH” Mildred… Where do people gain their opinions, Oh sorry, TGAT from? Sound Bites?
The irrational opinions, TGAT, not to be confused with reality, that are prevalent in today’s “Information Culture” are the largest body of evidence speaking to the validity of polls.
Having said that what people believe to be TGAT is all that really counts now isn’t it.
Wish I Wasn’t,
GoingThere