Barack finally has his bounce. For weeks many political experts and pollsters have been wondering why the race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain had stayed so tight, even after the Illinois senator wrested the nomination from Hillary Clinton. With numbers consistently showing rock-bottom approval ratings for President Bush and a large majority of Americans unhappy with the country's direction, the opposing-party candidate should, in the normal course, have attracted more disaffected voters. Now it looks as if Obama is doing just that. A new NEWSWEEK Poll shows that he has a substantial double-digit lead, 51 percent to 36 percent, over McCain among registered voters nationwide.
The media must really be loving this. This will be the talk of the Sunday talk shows.
On the surface, it would appear that Obama is surging right now by saying very little (as he has from the beginning of his campaign). To the untrained eye, it looks to be a bad situation for McCain. But to the trained eye, it looks like more media manipulation of numbers to cast their favorite in a favorable light.
Newsweek (like may others) does not count on people reading the methodology of the reported poll. But at PYY, we do.
The red-flag in this one is the sample. Not only is it hard to get an accurate picture from the small sample sizes that these pollsters rely on to gather the information that media conglomerates love to run with, the sample demographic is very telling. The methodology shows the following numbers surveyed:
324 Democrats
307 Independents
231 Republicans
It looks like Republicans were represented by 93 less than Dems, and 76 less than Independents. Only 26% of the sample was Republican and the truth be known, not many will voting for Obama. By contrast, most Democrats have fallen in lockstep with the Deaniac party choice and will likely vote for him.
Like I said, it takes an inquisitive spirit to dig deeper than what the news outlets are running. One poll, does not a trend make.
2 comments:
Recently, I discussed this very topic with a long time friend. He is not sure pollsters are as much interested in manipulating data as they are providing statistical analysis from a range of questions.
I disagree. First off, I think that polling data is always subject to question; ignoring the “questions” posed, for example, does a survey of 500 people living in Boston, or 1,000 living in Harlem represent the views of the entire Nation?
If a pollster is attempting to assess “job performance” of President Bush, and you confine your survey to the residents of New Orleans, what possible result should you expect? If CBS News chooses to repeat that low performance number every nine minutes, does it have an impact on the viewing public? And then, the next time a pollster asks the same question, this time in East Los Angeles, and the result incessantly aired, does this manipulate the thinking among viewers of CBS News?
In a similar way, suppose a poll result shows that Barack Obama has a comfortable lead over John McCain – is the publication of this data more likely, or less likely to increase anxiety among Republican voters . . . and encourage them to vote in the general election?
It would be helpful to know where the survey was conducted and the political demographics of participants. Otherwise, I regard the data as questionable. How interesting that news media are quick to tell us about the president’s low job approval rating, but conveniently overlook the fact that congressional performance is ten points lower. Manipulative?
Mustang, I think you are right on the money. I know the same thing can apply in sports. I remember a fight back in the 80s between Gerry Cooney and Larry Holmes.
Holmes was a consummate boxer that learned much from his sparring days with Ali. No one in that era could touch him. Then, along comes this guy named Cooney, who was a racking machine that never allowed a fight he was to go past three rounds. KO, KO, KO, etc.
In the days leading up to the fight, the sports press kept asking the question, can Cooney go the distance with Holmes? They asked it over and over, ad nauseum.
Now as a boxing aficionado in that day, there is little doubt in my mind that if Cooney would have done what he always did (taking the fight right to Holmes and unleashing a relentless barrage of bombs), he would have won that fight.
Instead, the press got into his head and had him worried about going the distance with Holmes. cooney paced himself early and subsequently, Cooney wore down in the later rounds. Holmes put him away late in the fight and we never saw the real Gerry Cooney ever again.
On the other hand, we saw what it can do to the underdog, in this last Super Bowl. Most of the pundits were picking New England to go the distance and finish the season perfect. But the NY Giants were motivated by that hype and we all know the outcome of that game.
The same kind of psychological manipulation does occur in politics, we are seeing some of it right now. How people respond will depend on how much of the hype they believe.
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