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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
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To: Raymond Duray who wrote (307729)10/12/2002 4:29:53 PM
From: H-Man  Read Replies (1) of 769670
 
Polls can be very good at answering the broad questions, provided they ask the right audience. Big questions like "Who are you going to vote for?" are highly accurate when asked of more than 1000 likely voters, during a weekday evening. The question at hand - "do you favor military action against Iraq?" is also a big question, the audience need only be a good cross-section of the public, which in this instance, is the case, as numerous polls done by different agencies all have similar results.

The poll in question is not a push poll. Such polls stand out in glaring fashion, since seemingly similar polls will produce widely varying results. This is not the case on this issue.

The polls become less accurate to the point of meaningless when more specific questions are asked, since how it is asked and the context in which it is asked can influence the question. For instance, asking the question:

"Which will be more important to you when you vote, the economy or foreign policy?" - is likely to lead to the majority answering “the economy”.

But if one asks the question:

"Which will be more important to you when you vote, the economy or national security?" - is likely to lead to the opposite answer.

We never saw a more poignant example of this as we saw during the Clinton years. My wife got one of these calls. It was really quite slick <g>. The questions went something like this:

1. How are you doing financially?
2.What do you think of the economy?
3.What kind of job do you think president Clinton is doing?

And thus the personal vs. job approval rating was born. I'll note that the distinction seems to have left the political lexicon
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