Polling

Here's one way to convince the public that ObamaCare is increasing in popularity: only tout the polls that support that contention. Ignore ones that don't.That's what many in the media are doing this week, as they hype a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showing that only 26 percent of the nation wants ObamaCare repealed. Poll results released by Rasmussen on the same day, however, show that…

CNN's Jack Cafferty may end up eating more than his words if Sarah Palin is elected the next president in 2012. After outlining how a current poll indicates "Obama's best hope of winning a second term just might be Alaska's dropout governor" on Tuesday's Situation Room, anchor Wolf Blitzer warned him that there's always the chance she may end up being elected. Cafferty replied, "If Sarah Palin is…

So what's more important: The fact that independents are as "upset" as Republicans, or that Americans' disapproval of how President Obama is handling the economy is at an all-time high? Here's another priority-related question: Is it more important that "independents and Republicans were half as likely as Democrats to be inspired and less prone to be hopeful, excited and proud," or that…

New York Times reporters Jeff Zeleny and Megan Thee-Brenan examined the findings of the latest CBS/New York Times poll. As November elections approach, things look pretty bleak for Democrats and President Obama especially, who earned a record low approval rating and bad marks on his handling of the economy. But Zeleny whispered a little between-round encouragement into the ear of the battered…

While acknowledging bad news for Democrats in the latest CBS News/New York Times poll on Thursday's CBS Early Show, White House correspondent Bill Plante worked to find a silver lining: "But when it comes to who's at fault for the rotten economy there's a disconnect. 37% say the Bush administration is most to blame. Only 5% blame the Obama administration." Following Plante's report, fill-in co-…

Well fancy that: The New York Times has learned what Times Watch has been pointing out for weeks: Not even New Yorkers want a large mosque built two blocks from the site of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.New York City residents were previously praised by Times reporters like Sheryl Gay Stolberg as better informed and thus more tolerant of the idea of a mosque at Ground Zero than ignorant outsiders.…

The Washington Post doesn't avoid the bad news for Democrats on Tuesday's front page, but it noticeably tried to hide the worst of it. The headline on the new ABC/Post poll was "Republicans making gains ahead of midterm elections; parties nearly even on trust; Obama's overall rating is at new low, poll finds." There is no graphic illustration of any poll result -- unlike their misleading GOP-…

Talk about an in-kind contribution. In a short item about a Democratic Governors Association election complaint about Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, the Associated Press's Julie Carr Smyth showed that she is willfully ignoring Buckeye State reality, or has been living a hermit's existence for the past few months. In describing Kasich's standing against Democratic incumbent…

Politico Monday evening ran the following headline:Tidal Wave? 10-point Poll Edge for GOP Inside, the news wasn't much better for the liberal press: The Gallup poll, coming at the end of a brutal August for Democrats and President Barack Obama, reinforces the rapidly forming prevailing view that the horizon is as bleak for Democrats as it ever has been.  The headline of the Gallup poll in…

"When it comes to praying, Obama prefers privacy." Thus reads the page A2 headline for Michael Shear's August 20 Washington Post story that reads like an extended Obama White House campaign press release. Shear opens with a story about how Obama prayed with "three Christian pastors" over the phone as he flew to Chicago to celebrate his 49th birthday. "As he celebrated his birthday, he was in a…

The number of Americans from all kinds of demographics who are unsure that President Obama is a Christian have grown since he's been in office. For instance, "fewer than half of Democrats (46%) know Obama is a Christian, down from 55% in March 2009. Barely four-in-ten African-Americans say he's a Christian, down from 56% last year," an exasperated Amy Sullivan noted in an August 19 Swampland…

Appearing in the 2:00PM ET hour on MSNBC, New York Daily News reporter Samuel Goldsmith cited a poll featured on the paper's website, about opposition to the Ground Zero mosque: "[it] shows that 70% of New Yorkers say that they think the opposition is out of hatred and religious intolerance."Unfortunately, Goldsmith forgot to mention that it was a completely unscientific poll that only appeared…

Memo to Alan Fram and Trevor Tompson of the Associated Press and two other writers who contributed to this report ("AP-GfK polls show Obama losing independents"): You should have taken the weekend off.When I saw a shorter, earlier version of the referenced AP report this morning, it didn't mention when AP's polling arm AP-GfK Roper had done their work. When I went to the polling home page and…

Lymari Morales at Gallup reports that confidence in the news media remains low. Remember when they suggest high negatives for politicians, they are hardly popular, either. They're "on par with Americans' lackluster confidence in banks and slightly better than their dismal rating of Health Management Organizations and big business." The report began: Americans continue to express near-record-low…