Please note that this poll oversampled libs, under sampled
conservatives & oversampled every demographic favorable
to libs. Then it asked loaded questions designed to get
pre-determined results. None of this is mentioned in the
article of course.
And guess what? They still didn't get what they wanted, so
they spin & distort the results.
Heh! Heh!
Public Opinion of Warrentless Wiretaps
By Marc Schulman on Presidential Authority
AMERICAN FUTURE
A New York Times/CBS poll has found that 53 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Bush’s authorizing eavesdropping without prior court approval “in order to reduce the threat of terrorism”; 46 percent disapproved. When the question was asked stripped of any mention of terrorism, 46 percent of those respondents approved, and 50 percent said they disapproved.
At the same time, 64 percent said they were very or somewhat concerned about losing civil liberties as a result of antiterrorism measures put in place by Mr. Bush since the attacks of Sept. 11.
70 percent of respondents said they would not be willing to support governmental monitoring of the communications of “ordinary Americans”; 68 percent said they would be willing to support such monitoring of “Americans the government is suspicious of.”
The complete results of the poll are available here.
nytimes.com
The poll was conducted just as the White House began its campaign to defend the surveillance program, and thus may have been too early to offer a full measure of that campaign’s effectiveness.
According to the Times,
<<< The findings, and follow-up interviews with some participants, clearly suggest that Mr. Bush has an opportunity to make the dispute over the program play to his political advantage. He has been pointing to the threat of another terrorist attack to justify the eavesdropping program and is trying, for the third election in a row, to suggest that he and his party are more aggressive about protecting the nation than are Democrats. >>>
More than a hint of bias is apparent in the article describing the results of the poll:
While a modest majority of Americans approved of warrentless surveillance, the title of the article is “New Poll Finds Mixed Support for Wiretaps.”
The results of the poll appear in the twelth paragraph of the article, not the first, where they belong.
Before stating the results of the key question, the article says this:
<<< The poll also signaled concern for Republicans as they prepare to defend their control of the House and the Senate in midterm elections this November. Investigations into Congressional corruption are taking a toll as the elections approach: 61 percent of Americans now hold an unfavorable view of Congress, the highest in 10 years. This finding holds particular peril for Republicans as the party that has been in charge. >>>
The article doesn’t say whether the opinion of Congressional Republicans is better or worse than the opinion of Congressional Democrats.
americanfuture.net
nytimes.com |
