Polling

The U.S. economy by most markers is performing admirably. According to the National Bureau of Labor Statistics, we have had 49 consecutive months of job growth. Unemployment is at a historic low of 4.7 percent, the average number of jobs created is holding steady at around 100,000 per month and real after-tax personal income has increased by 12.5 percent. Yet, according to a CNN poll, half of Americans think the country is in a recession. As Larry Elder writes today at TownHall.com, the reason can be found in the way that the media portray the economy. And that portrayal differs dramatically when a Republican is in office as opposed to a Democrat. Elder writes,

What, then, accounts for the pessimism?

Was it just a slip of the tongue, or did Josephine "Josie" Hearn of Politico just let her liberal slip show? On this evening's "Tucker," she sure seemed to wax enthusiastic over a positive poll result for Hillary.

Norah O'Donnell subbed for Tucker Carlson on his MSNBC show this evening, and talk turned to the latest LA Times|Bloomberg poll, which put Hillary at 48%, with Obama at 17% and Edwards trailing with 13%. Norah invited Hearn to comment.

NORAH O'DONNELL: Josie, it just shows she's continuing her wide margin on just about every demographic, right?

On Monday’s CBS "Early Show,"host Harry Smith teased an interview with Barack Obama at the beginning of show and spoke of how the Democratic presidential candidate is often, "...greeted as a Rock Star," by voters.

The toughest questions asked by Smith were questions of why Obama is behind Hillary Clinton in the polls, something Smith attributed to the fact that, "There are people who like you a lot, who are saying we want more of that audacity, there's not enough audacity in the campaign." Well, we already know that Smith is in the Al Gore camp, so finding any actual candidate as audacious would be a challenge.

Smith continued to wonder about the futility of Obama’s campaign against Hillary, assuming her nomination as a forgone conclusion: "A lot of people say it's a fait accompli. I mean, not only will she get the nomination, she's going to get elected." French terminology aside, Smith tried to urge Obama on, wondering if the Illinois Senator was putting his full energy into the campaign: "Are you too cool? Have you been too cool?" I’m sure Smith also believes that Fred Thompson has not brought enough "audacity" to the campaign, or has been "too cool."

On Tuesday morning’s Early Show, CBS anchor Harry Smith led into a Hillary Clinton interview with a poll that sounded like it had been commissioned by the Clinton team: "In a new CBS News poll, 66 percent of voters said her health care experience in Bill Clinton’s administration is actually a strength for her. As we know, her efforts in the 1990s failed; 52 percent of those questioned said it wasn’t her fault."

But dig into the CBS poll, and see what Smith left out: when respondents asked if they were confident in "Hillary’s ability to make the right decisions about health care, or are you uneasy about her approach," more people (48 percent) said they were uneasy about Hillary’s health agenda, compared to 42 percent who said they were confident about her health care decision-making.

The Democrats hit General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker with the results of an ABC/BBC poll of Iraqi citizens during the two days of testimony. Barbara Boxer was so immersed in the poll results that she couldn't even muster up a question for General Petraeus. Since the poll results were not released until Monday September 10, 2007, it left little time for an indepth look at the poll, the sampling size, the surveyors and the results from all the questions.

First of all - the sample size. The number of Iraqis questioned for the poll was approximately 2100 people. 2100 people in a country with an estimated population of 27,499,638 according to the CIA Factbook. That means the poll results were from 1/1000 of the population. How can a sample size that small even be considered partially representative of the population?

On the day of the long-anticipated report from General David Petraeus on the “surge,” the CBS Evening News ignored how its latest poll discovered the third straight month of an increase in the percent of Americans who believe the surge has “made things better” in Iraq. As the percentage has gone up, CBS's interest in the result has gone down. In July, anchor Katie Couric led with how only 19 percent thought the surge was “making things better” and a month later, in August, when that number jumped to 29 percent, CBS and Couric gave it just 12 seconds 20 minutes into the newscast..

While Monday's CBS Evening News skipped how the share crediting the surge for “making things better” rose to 35 percent in the survey conducted through Saturday, the newscast found time to highlight three other findings that stressed public opposition to the war and distrust of President Bush. Jim Axelrod relayed how “in the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, just four percent think Iraq will become a stable democracy in the next year or two. More than half [53%] say it'll never happen. [On screen: Yes, but it will take longer: 42%] And just five percent think the Bush administration best able to make the right calls on the war. [Congress: 21%; U.S. military commanders: 68%].” A bumper before the first ad break showcased how on “U.S. troop levels in Iraq,” 30 percent said they “should increase/keep the same,” while 65 percent responded they “should decrease/remove all.”

A new Zogby Poll says that 54 percent of Americans believe Iraq is not a lost cause. However, the mainstram media have so far not managed to report much if anything on the startling new poll.

A majority of Americans - 54% - believe the United States has not lost the war in Iraq, but there is dramatic disagreement on the question between Democrats and Republicans, a new UPI/Zogby Interactive poll shows. While two in three Democrats (66%) said the war effort has already failed, just 9% of Republicans say the same.

Many Democrats, seeing the fact that the surge appears to be working, have realized that their defeatist attitudes and willingness to surrender may cost them dearly in the next election, have changed their tune somewhat, or, like the New York Times, have merely moved the goalposts of what constitutes victory. However, the major media, who have been overwhelmingly in favor of a precipitous defeat seem to be a little slow in reporting that their years of negative reporting and defeatism have not yet managed to dissuade a majority of their countrymen from wanting to win.

CNN’s Jack Cafferty, who recently thinly-disguised his support for the impeachment of President Bush, couldn’t resist talking about the recent AP/Ipsos poll that claimed that liberals read more than conservatives. (See Matthew Sheffield's post debunking the poll.) His question during his "Cafferty File" segment during the 4 pm EDT hour of Wednesday’s "The Situation Room" took this apparent "fact" for granted. "Liberals read more books than conservatives. Why?"

The full transcript of Jack Cafferty’s segment:

Liberals around the country are smiling today at an Associated Press poll and story circulating on the web claiming that conservatives read less than liberals, none more so than former Colorado Democratic congresswoman Pat Schroeder who despite being president of the American Association of Publishers decided she felt like insulting half of her potential reading audience by dusting off an old liberal refrain:

"The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: 'No, don't raise my taxes, no new taxes,' [...] It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes' on every page. [...] She said liberals tend to be policy wonks who "can't say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion."

It's all too familiar and really kind of sad since this poll is hardly conclusive (more on that in a minute). For all their talk about being "regular people," the left sure loves calling their fellow citizens stupid and moronic. You'd think that after employing this method for so long—think Reagan-as-idiot-savant, rationalizing the radio failure of Mario Cuomo, Air America, etc.—that the left would realize their elitist and snobbish attitude and either drop it or drop the whole "party of the people" nonsense. After all, how can you be for the common man if you regard him as an ignorant dolt?

Looking to sample the political opinions of regular Americans? What better cross-section than the denizens of MSM newsrooms! That seems to be Mike Barnicle's attitude, at least. The former Boston Globe columnist-turned-MSNBC contributor is guest-hosting for Chris Matthews on this afternoon's "Hardball."

Chatting with guests Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post and Holly Bailey of Newsweek, talk turned to the topic of Americans' desire for political change. At one point Barnicle made this observation:

MIKE BARNICLE: The force for change that's out there, if you talk to regular people, people like me, people like you, the idea that they want a change is a very powerful force.

View video here.

Many Americans do not believe the news media are fair, accurate or even moral, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. The poll of 1500 Americans conducted late last month found that most of the public thinks news organizations are politically biased (55%) and often publish inaccurate stories (53%), and that roughly a third of the audience say the media are too critical of America (43%), hurt democracy (36%) and are immoral (32%).

Half of Americans (52%) label the media as liberal, led by self-described Republicans (75%) but also large percentages of independents (49%) and even Democrats (37%). And while journalists tout themselves as the public's objective eyes and ears, many more Americans are confident that the military provides an accurate view of the war in Iraq (52%), compared with 42 percent who trust that the press offers accurate reports.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Pew found that those who have chosen to bypass traditional news outlets in favor of the Internet give the “harshest indictments of the press.”

It's scary, isn't it?

WASHINGTON - To see the type of person who still backs him, President Bush need only look in the mirror. The president fits the composite of today's Bush supporter: a conservative, white, Republican man, an evangelical Christian who goes to church regularly.

Hammered by bad news in Iraq, congressional investigations and recent failed domestic initiatives such as immigration reform, Bush's job approval rating has spiraled to record lows for his presidency. Two-thirds of Republicans and about one-third of independents still support him, but virtually no Democrats are left in Bush's camp.

Really, were there ever any Democrats in his camp (besides Sen. Joe Lieberman)? After Bush *cough* stole the 2000 election and all... 

A new poll released Wednesday gave extraordinary evidence as to how continued negative reports from a bearish media have impacted the public’s view of the economy.

As reported by Reuters (emphasis added):

Two-thirds of those surveyed, 66 percent, said the direction of economic policy was fair or poor.

Yet, these same folks are very optimistic about their own economic condition:

A new poll released by Scott Rasmussen Friday identified that by almost a two to one margin, people believe the media are liberally biased.

As you might imagine, for the most part, those that don’t see it this way are registered Democrats.

Go figure.

Regardless, the data was quite illuminating to say the least (emphasis added throughout):

According to the UK's Life Style Extra, a majority of 4,000 people surveyed believe global warming is a natural occurrence, as opposed to being caused by mankind, despite a scientific consensus claimed by the article:

ALMOST three quarters of people believe global warming is a 'natural occurrence' and not a result of carbon emissions, a survey claimed today.

This goes against the views of the vast majority of scientists who believe the rise in the earth's temperatures is due to pollution.

[...]

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which represents most scientists, stated earlier that the increase in global temperatures is 'very likely due to the observed increase of man-made greenhouse gas concentrations'.

They define very likely as 'more than 90 percent certain'.

The MSM delights in highlighting President Bush's anemic poll numbers. Congress's approval rating in the latest Gallup poll was so shockingly, historically, low at 14% that the MSM could hardly ignore it.

But there was another finding emerging from that same Gallup poll that has received very little media attention: the societal institution that enjoys, by far, the highest confidence among Americans is, at 69%, the military.

Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Bill Carr discussed the Gallup findings on last night's "Right Angle," the Ithaca-based TV show that this NewsBuster hosts. While clearly pleased by the military's achievement in that regard, Sec. Carr was also duly diplomatic about it, as this exchange reflects.

RIGHT ANGLE HOST MARK FINKELSTEIN: So 70% for the military, 14% for Congress, which if my mathematics are correct, that's five times more confidence in the military than in the Congress. So perhaps some of the Pentagon officials should keep that in their back pocket the next time they're being grilled up on the Hill.

DEPUTY UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE BILL CARR: We would never raise that.

But I just did.

View video here.

Politics has become so divisive that liberals in America really and truly believe that President Bush is utterly delusional. The rest of the country disagrees in varying degrees. It's clear, however, which side AP reporter Jennifer Loven is on. Hat tip: Power Line:

Confronted with strong opposition to his Iraq policies, President Bush decides to interpret public opinion his own way. Actually, he says, people agree with him.

Democrats view the November elections that gave them control of Congress as a mandate to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq. They're backed by evidence; election exit poll surveys by The Associated Press and television networks found 55 percent saying the U.S. should withdraw some or all of its troops from Iraq.

While Friday's New York Times underlined "broad support" for current immigration "reform" proposals, selectively highlighting the positive poll results, this is not how the Times reported the Bush tax cuts of 2001. Back then, Times reporters tried to dismiss their own poll numbers as meaningless and growing more irrelevant by the hour.

On March 14, 2001, the Times report by Richard Berke and Janet Elder highlighted how Bush had a decent approval rating, but he and Vice President Cheney also drew lots of negatives. The headline was "60% In Poll Favor Bush, But Economy Is Major Concern." This, in paragraph eight, is how they pooh-poohed the public support for tax cuts:

On the immediate agenda, Mr. Bush should be encouraged that most Americans endorse his signature blueprint to cut taxes. Yet they do not seem deeply enthusiastic. Most see the plan as favoring the rich and doing little, if anything, to help average, middle-income people or to stimulate the economy.

Charles Johnson over at Little Green Footballs has identified a rather interesting phenomenon at Yahoo this morning.

As the website reported on the results of a just-released Pew Research Center survey of Muslim Americans, the headline continued to change:

One hour and 52 minutes ago, the headline was:

Most U.S. Muslims reject suicide bombings.

Thirty-five minutes ago, the same story was re-released:

Some US Muslims justify suicide attacks.

Will it change again? The second headline is actually less politically correct than the first, so stay tuned...

And here’s the fabulous punch line:

Michelle Malkin takes issue with an AP headline that downplays some frightening numbers in a new poll of Muslim attitudes towards suicide bombing. (updates posted below)

"Most U.S. Muslims reject suicide bombings," AP reports.

Here's what should be headlined from the article about a new Pew poll (which you can find here):

Headline:

"One in four younger U.S. Muslims say suicide bombings to defend their religion are acceptable at least in some circumstances..."

Headline:

We've been hearing a lot about Bush's low approval ratings, but what about the new Democratic congress? Despite the fact that they won the 2006 elections, Democrats' poll numbers are actually lower than that of President Bush.

Ed Morrissey reports:

If the Democrats have had a few laughs looking at approval ratings for George Bush, the laughter has probably stopped this morning after Gallup's latest survey. It shows that Congress has even lower ratings than the President, and the number has dropped consistently since the Democrats first took charge [...]

How bad is it? Even Democrats mostly disapprove of Congress. Only 37% of the majority party's voters think that Congress has performed well; Gallup doesn't mention the percentage that disapproves, but it seems almost certain that it outstrips 37%, unless more than 26% are clueless. Congress gets its worst ratings not from Republicans (25%), but from independents (24%). That should get the attention of leadership in both chambers, who owe their majorities to those independents.

According to a Rasmussen poll released today, just 39 percent of Democrats in this country say they are certain that President Bush did not know about the 9/11 attacks before they happened. Thirty-five percent of Democrats said they believe Bush did know, 26 percent are uncertain. Independents and Republicans are far more likely to disbelieve the conspiracy nonsense.

Frightening stuff.

It's really sad to what degree the left-dominated media has allowed the "truther" movement to gain such wide currency in our marketplace of ideas. You can bet if a Democrat had been president, the left in this country would not be so similarly deluded about 9/11.

The bad news just keeps coming for CBS anchor Katie Couric. First she was trashed in a very public way in the Philadelphia Inquirer, next it was let out that the man she replaced, Bob Schieffer, was probably behind the attacks. Now comes news that she lags quite a bit behind her ABC and NBC rivals in public opinion polls:

One-third of Americans say they have a negative view of Katie Couric, her personal popularity lagging behind rivals Charles Gibson and Brian Williams just as her evening news program trails in the ratings.

Poll fixation by the media has been a frequent topic of discussion for conservatives as the press have focused ad nauseum on the falling approval numbers of President Bush the past couple of years.

With that in mind, will the press show equal interest in a study just released by the Gallup Organization identifying Hillary Clinton’s favorability rating plummeting an astounding thirteen percentage points in two months to one of its lowest levels since 1993?

Given the truly shocking results reported on Wednesday, one could easily envision this being the lead story for network evening news programs if the data was about one of the Republican presidential frontrunners, and if not for the massacre at Virginia Tech (emphasis added throughout):

The mainstream media often uses polls to give a biased impression, and CNN’s Miles O’Brien used a recent AP/IPSOS poll to paint a rosy picture of the Democrat-controlled Congress. O’Brien reported on Tuesday that the Democrats were "riding pretty high" with a 40 percent approval rating. For some comparison, in September 2005, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer characterized a 40 percent approval rating for President Bush as "a low point," and used the figure to reenforce his report on the President’s "political troubles."

It’s interesting to note that another recent poll by Gallup puts the current approval rating of Congress at 33%. This is up 7 percent since October 2006, which was right before the election as well.

As many people know, Rosie O’Donnell has landed herself in another high-profile brouhaha with yet another high-profile media figure.

In December, it was Donald Trump. Now, it’s Bill O’Reilly.

Yet, this time, her statements which precipitated the skirmish – that America may have set up the recent showdown between Iran and the captured British sailors, as well as the Bush administration being involved in bringing down the World Trade Center on 9/11 – appear to have enflamed the American people.

In fact, AOL is currently running an online poll asking the question (h/t Hot Air): "Should ABC fire Rosie, as O'Reilly implies?" The tally as of 10:00 AM EST Tuesday is:

At the end of his 2004 campaign, Howard Dean started Democracy for America, billed as a grassroots Democratic political action committee "dedicated to supporting fiscally responsible, socially progressive candidates at all levels of government."

Last week, DFA staged an online Dem presidential candidate preference poll. As a proud DFA member [meaning that I joined the email list], I just received the results of the poll. Hillary's advisers might want to dust off Hirohito's famous statement at the end of WWII to the effect that the situation "has not progressed entirely as we would have wished." Because Hillary finished in fifth place with 8.7%, behind Dennis Kucinich and barely one point ahead of Bill Richardson. Obama finished first with 28%, John Edwards a close second at 25%.

Now it's true that this is an unscientific poll, and that DFA surely attracts people from the liberal wing of the Dem party. But then again, isn't the conventional wisdom that Dem primary voters come from that same liberal wing?

Was DFA Executive Director Tom Hughes mortified by the results? He buried the mention of Hillary's embarrassingly bad performance in the eighth paragraph of his email!

There were two Iraq polls released on Sunday. One is guaranteed to be headline news. The other will likely be totally ignored.

In fact, one of the polls was already referenced by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week,” as well as reported by USA Today and CNN.

Know what the difference is between these surveys, both of which rather compelling as they asked questions of Iraqi citizens? Well, one painted a rather dire picture of conditions in the embattled country, while the other found a very optimistic people who don’t believe their nation is in a civil war.

As the American media will likely focus all of its attention on the more pessimistic survey, here is the contrary view nobody other than Fox News is likely to cover as reported by the Sunday Times (emphasis added throughout):

Unbelievably, disgraced newsreader, Dan Rather, claimed at a recent festival that American journalism "has in some ways lost its guts" and that the MSM has "adopted the go-along-to-get-along (attitude)."

As reported by CNETNews.com, Rather was a keynote speaker at the South by Southwest Interactive festival this past weekend where he gave a 2 hour talk on the shape of journalism and the Internet.

One has to wonder to which "gutless" American media he is referring? Is it the same media that was so weak-kneed as to leak damaging national security information, the same media that just "goes along" to undermine the war effort at every opportunity? Is it the same one that goes out of its way to malign the US and Israeli governments? It is that MSM Rather imagines has somehow gone soft?

Brent Bozell's culture column this week unfolds the new polling numbers for the MRC's Culture and Media Institute on the American people's impression of moral decline and the media's role in it:

A new cultural-values survey of 2,000 American adults performed by the polling firm of Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates for the Culture and Media Institute reveals a strong majority, 74 percent, believes moral values in America are weaker than they were 20 years ago. Almost half, 48 percent, agree that values are much weaker than they were 20 years ago.