The Scandal of “Public Opinion”
Posted by H-Bomb
Ankle Biting Pundits
Date: Thursday, 23 March 2006
Ann Coulter’s column today got me thinking …
Though I have commissioned, designed and written questions for hundreds of public opinion polls, I have never “rigged” a poll. I have used “push questions.” I have presented information to respondents in a flattering – or if necessary, a deeply unflattering – light. And, of course, I have released to the media polling data that reflected public opinion helpful to my current cause or mission, while withholding data that was harmful to my cause or mission.
I did all this because, for as long as I have been in politics, public opinion surveys have been useful for reflecting public opinion, but in also in shaping public opinion, as well.
There are no more energetic practitioners of using polls to shape public opinion than the Mainstream Media. As we at ABP have demonstrated (see at links below, for example) repeatedly, the Mainstream Media cherrypicks the respondents of their polls, and low and behold, each one turns out to be heavily skewed in favor of people identifying themselves as Democrats, virtually assuring a desirable (read: anti-Republican) outcome. The result? MSM outlets have an almost permanent banner headline available to run in their morning editions: "Bush Favorability at All Time Low!"
But these surveys disproportionately reflect the Democrats’ opinions of the president, not the opinions of the people who actually show up to vote. These MSM polls are so obviously intended to shape (not reflect) the debate, one wonders why anyone takes them seriously. Yet all week, the talking head shows have been blitzed with furrow-browed, serious-looking political hacks-turned-journalists (Tim Russert, I’m looking at you) play-acting about how grave the situation is for the president and the Republicans. Save for, perhaps, some heh-hehs and chuckles during the commercial breaks, these fellows honestly thought they were pulling a fast one over on the American public.
And yet, they have pulled this trick on George W. Bush for the last five years. And they’ve pulled it on Republicans since I’ve been alive. And by-and-large it has not worked. Aside from giving the gullible radicals at the Daily Kos something to talk about and Tim Russert something to pretend to be concerned about, these phony polls have accomplished nothing.
I recall a huge spread in the Washington Post a couple of months before the 2004 election expressing glee (and perhaps relief that they could now take a breather) that John Kerry had finally overtaken George Bush on national security and terrorism issues. For all intents and purposes the race should have been over. But it wasn’t. And Bush won. That’s because the poll was a sham; Kerry never had stronger national security credentials that President Bush and in the end, voters got to decide in the one poll that can’t be rigged (unless you live in the inner city) who was the better choice.
What I am getting at is this: Public opinion polls as public opinion shapers are a failure. Using a public opinion poll – no matter how well crafted to manipulate the outcome – to fundamentally change public opinion is like asking a cat to fetch a stick; it’s simply not what it was designed to do.
Now, television advertising is a venue that was specifically designed to shape public opinion. It has no other purpose. And Republicans are uniquely good at creating compelling, motivating television commercials (I have written one or two doozies myself), while Democrats are uniquely bad at it. This is one reason why for two years we can hear some of the most hateful agenda-driven journalism directed at Republicans, who nevertheless win in the closing weeks of a campaign.
This dynamic has also created a weak and complacent Democrat Party, grown soft from reading its own press releases as headline news. Their bloody-eyed outrage at the outcomes of the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections is clear evidence that they haven’t any real clue that they are the minority. They can say, quite sincerely, “I don’t know anyone who voted for George Bush!”
What has happened is this: These Mainstream Media polls have literally created a fantasy world, inhabited by liberal Democrats, in which George W. Bush is each day less popular than the last. I sometimes half expect a poll to emerge that shows more people oppose George W. Bush than live in the United States. And yet he keeps getting elected and Republican numbers in Washington continue to grow. And so you end up with distraught anti-war moms living in ditches and dangerous radicals emerging as Democrat Party leaders.
anklebitingpundits.com
townhall.com
anklebitingpundits.com
anklebitingpundits.com
anklebitingpundits.com
anklebitingpundits.com
technewsworld.com |
