AP Poll Report Claims Confidence That Obama Will 'Fix' Economy; Actual Poll Asked If He Will 'Improve' It

Now that Barack Obama has won the presidency, the poll cookers at the Associated Press have dutifully generated a barely-disguised press release for him.

A report this afternoon on the results of an AP GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media Poll is headlined "Most in AP poll confident Obama will fix economy " at Yahoo!, Google (shorter report), and the wire service's home site (all are dynamic links subject to change).

There are "only" two problems:

• The underlying sample is heavily skewed towards Democrats, including strong Democrats.
• Much more important, in fact crossing into downright dishonesty, the poll question asked had to do with whether respondents thought that Obama would "improve" the economy, not "fix" it.

Here are the first two paragraphs of the relatively short, unbylined report (bolds are mine to note fawning and erroneous reporting):

In one of the economy's darkest hours in decades, it looks like people are taking Barack Obama up on his exhortations for hope and change.

Seven in 10, or 72 percent, voice confidence the president-elect will make the changes needed to revive the stalling economy, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll released Tuesday. Underscoring how widely the public is counting on its new leader, 44 percent of Republicans joined nearly all Democrats and most independents in expressing that belief.

The rest of the report as it currently exists could be the topic of a separate post, and perhaps will be.

The underlying poll is available at this link as a PDF; click on "Nov. 6th-10th: Post-Election Poll" once there.

The poll sample was not only overweighted by party affiliation, but also by the strength of that affiliation (Questions PID1 and PID2 at Page 7 of the PDF). It consisted of 48% Democrats (21%. strong 19% moderate, 8% indie leaners) vs. 34% Republicans (13% strong, 11% moderate, 10% indie leaners).

More fundamentally, here is the actual poll question about the economy (Question CUR10 at Page 5 of the PDF; bolds are mine):

How confident are you that Barack Obama will be successful in bringing about the changes needed to improve the economy?

The phrase "bringing about the changes" is a totally unnecessary addition of words. I can't see a reason to do it unless the goal is to cleverly echo Obama's campaign rhetoric to influence the poll's result. The question should simply have been, "How confident are you that Barack Obama will be able to improve the economy?"

The difference between "improving the economy" and "fixing" it is so obvious it doesn't even require discussion.

Reporting a poll result that asked about "improvement" as if it really asked about "fixing" the economic situation, or "making the changes needed to revive the stalling economy" is flat-out, inarguable journalistic malpractice by a group that ought to rename itself the Assembled Propagandists.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.