What to Do When the Polls Don't Go Your Way
By Cori Dauber
You've heard about aggressive interrogration techniques "migrating" to Iraq?
Well that ain't all that can migrate, baby.
Here's an article, via Instapundit, on a brand new poll, taken since the elections, showing that Iraqis are more positive about their future than at any point since the invasion. It's not just the greatest spread recorded between those feeling positive and those who aren't, it's also a huge jump since the last poll:
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The survey of 1,967 Iraqis was conducted Feb. 27-March 5, after Iraq (news - web sites) held its first free elections in half a century in January. According to the poll, 62% say the country is headed in the right direction and 23% say it is headed in the wrong direction. That is the widest spread recorded in seven polls by the group, says Stuart Krusell, IRI director of operations for Iraq. In September, 45% of Iraqis thought the country was headed in the wrong direction and 42% thought it was headed in the right direction. The IRI is a non-partisan, U.S. taxpayer-funded group that promotes democracy abroad. (My emph.)
Message 21145008
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Wow. That's pretty positive, huh?
I've written before about how the New York Times handles situations like this. If the scientific polling data cuts against the narrative you're pushing, then it's time for that New York Times specialty: the resturant story! Otherwise known as the "non-poll poll." Or, as I've written before:
When the polls show attitudes that you don't like (that is, attitudes that go against the narrative you've been pushing), not to worry!
Get out there and interview some people -- preferably (when doing a domestic story) in resturants.
Then report (entirely accurately) that people hold different opinions on the matter at hand. Provide great quotes representing both sides. Maybe even provide more quotes from those whose opinions aren't in the majority (if we were to look at scientific polling data.)
Just make sure you never, ever, report on how you decided who to talk to, how many people you actually spoke with, or -- and this is most important of all -- how you chose which quotes to use.
Doing that might make it clear that you're no where close to random sampling and no where close to random selection of quotes, that your quotes were selectively chosen, and couldn't stand up to the polling data. After all, the whole point is to provide people with something vivid and colorful to compare with those cold, impersonal numbers.
So, with yet another positive poll of Iraqis out, it was fairly predictable that there would suddenly be a piece centered on efforts to "sense" the feeling on the Iraqi street appearing in the Times. Just so long as those efforts didn't involve actual scientific polling methods.
Sure enough, today we get, "Many Iraqis Losing Hope That Politics Will Yield Real Change."
The piece starts with the requisite quote from the unhappy single Iraqi, and boy, kudos to the reporter, he really found himself a spectaculary unhappy Iraqi:
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Haithm Ali, a wiry blacksmith, was welding an iron gate in his shop in Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in northeastern Baghdad, when he was asked for his thoughts about the country's new national assembly. Mr. Ali's face broke into a bitter smile.
"I don't expect any government to be formed," he said, his welding glasses pushed up over his forehead. "And they won't find any solutions to the situation we find ourselves in."
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What's amazing is what comes next. It displays either a stunning lack of awareness of what's been going on in Iraq for, well, months and months, or is simply a bald faced lie -- and a pretty damn bad one, since even if reporters for the Times don't have Google (which I admit, there are days I begin to suspect that) they have to know that their readers do have it.
He writes:
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Nothing like a scientific poll is possible yet in Iraq. But as the national assembly's first brief meeting came and went, broadcast into thousands of Iraqi homes on television, a sampling of street opinion in two Iraqi cities found a widespread dismay and even anger that the elections have not yet translated into a new government. (My emph.)
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Wow. Really?
Then how do you explain this?
channel4.com
or (pdf) this?
taemag.com
or this?
usatoday.com
this?
washingtonpost.com
this?
comw.org
I think I'll stop there.
One could argue there are flaws in these polls. But then they would be flawed scientific polls. Not non-existent scientific polls.
Back to the reporter:
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The interviews - which included members of Iraq's major religious and ethnic groups - indicated in particular a striking sense of disillusionment among Shiites, who make up 60 percent of Iraq's population but were brutally suppressed under the rule of Saddam Hussein.
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Now, it's entirely possible that those who were most excited about voting are the most angry that a government hasn't been formed. But in the IRI poll, they are also the most positive about the future.
How to reconcile those two? Well, the poll data is fairly fresh, taken up until March 5th. Is it really possible that the Shia have become so frustrated with the extra week's wrangling that they've become disillusioned with the entire process and given up?
Or is it more likely that that's why we put our faith in scientific polling, and not reporters wandering around on the street -- particularly given that those reporters probably aren't wandering around on the street, but are probably sending out stringers, who are likely asking their friends, who are talking about what their friends think, in a circle and network of people who are likely to believe the same thing -- in other words, the problem is the people the reporter heard from are probably self-selected and not random. (Although, hey, this Times reporter gave his stringers credit, you'll notice. Just to be clear.) Because while the poll shows 62% are positive overall, 66% of the Shia in the south are positive.
That is not a "striking sense of disillusionment."
The reporter, besides the blacksmith and a construction worker, a few people walking home, talks to the group of people who show up in one barber shop, for example -- and it doesn't matter how many people show up there. That isn't going to be a random sample.
But, hey, he got some great quotes.
He even talked to an unhappy Kurd.
Of course, according to that apparently non-existing poll, 71% of the Kurds feel good about the future.
But, hey, what are numbers compared to quotes that powerful.
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