Stop the Presses! Polls Used to Mislead!
From our wacky friends at Daily Kos:
Markos Moulitsas - March 14th, 2005 Do you approve or disapprove the way Bush is handling social security?
Approve 35 (38)
Disapprove 56 (55)
...
We are winning this battle. Any Democrat who thinks we should compromise is blind. The GOP won't keep at this for much longer. The political danger is too high.
Notice that the question cited above does not mention personal savings accounts in any form whatsoever. It simply asks about "handling," even though Bush hasn't really done anything at all about Social Security so far. What is there to approve or disapprove of?
Seems to me it'd be quite easy for those polled to take this as a question more about the state of Social Security than Bush's handling of it; and, as you'd hope, most people don't like the state it's in. But to take it as a disapproval of Bush's still ambiguous proposals is silly, because the same poll asks about those proposals specifically. Behold:
ABC News/Washington Post Poll "Would you support or oppose a plan in which people who chose to could invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market?"
The results? 56% support, 41% opposed. Kos, naturally, excludes this.
Favoring the vaguer question over the more specific one is a bit like favoring exit polls over actual vote totals, don't you think?
Once again, my hat is tipped in the general direction of PoliPundit. They're wearing my brim out at this point.
» March 15th, 2005
|
|
Calendar
More Entries
Blogroll
Instapundit
Andrew Sullivan
Tom Maguire
Decision '08
Patrick O'Keefe
Categories
Blogging
Democrats
Economy
Elections '04
Elections '06
Elections '08
Entertainment
George W. Bush
Iraq
Media
Miscellaneous
Republicans
Social Security
Supreme Court
Technology
War on Terror
Email Me
|
