Politics

The Faux News Network?

Trust the Fox Network or trust the polls presented by the media? Better think again. Actually, it is prudent to be careful and get as many and diverse sources of information as possible, especially when it comes to polls. Check out this graph showing Bush's approval rating by Professor Pollkatz that compares a number of polling companies. It is quite enlightening.

Why are Bush's rankings always higher in Fox's and Disney owned ABC's polls when compared to most others? Why do the numbers in Rupert Murdoch's Faux Network polls usually come out to favor conservative views? When taking into account the usual reported margin of error of 3-4% and seeing that often many polls are 10 or more points apart, you can see that somebody's wrong. But who? This problem is only enhanced when looking at the graph of Bush disapproval ratings. Here we can clearly see a difference of up to 25% between some polls. Something is way off here! The "science" of polling is very weak and is very subject to biases. The Faux network seems to bias their polls to favor an outcome that they desire. It is quite likely that other parts of the political spectrum do the same. Perhaps polls (gasp) are often used to guide public opinion rather than objectively find out the truth about it.

Are some of these companies more object than others? I have heard so, but who and how objective can they ever really be? Can their actually be an accurate poll? Polling is a "soft" science and can be useful to a limited extent. However, great prudence is advised when using polls for making decisions of great consequence such as starting a war that defies the essential tenants that the United States was founded on.

Additionally, what are these polls truly saying? Do you really think that the general public actually thought that Bush was doing a dramatically better job a week after Sept. 11? It is doubtful. It is likely that is was more of a sense of nationalism and that any person in Bush's position would have had a similar rise. The country thought that it should get behind whoever was leading it. It was America that they supported, not Bush. Notice that once the actual job performance can be separated from the reaction of the moment, his numbers consistently drop. Often people will answer in ways that may appear contradictory from question to question. In one poll the very same people who said that they did not believe Bush said that they supported him.

My personal experience further erodes my faith in polls. At this moment, it is difficult to find anybody who favors any war with Iraq. Even taking into account the narrow cross section of society that I associate with, it would seem that I would come across more than one in 50 who support a war rather than the one in two or one in four that the media reports. Furthermore, during the 2000 Presedential Campaign I spent a lot of time in Denver and also in a well to do area of Dallas. For months I asked friends and strangers who they favored as a presidential candidate. I took care to get as broad a cross section of society as I could.

The results were totally contradictory to what the polls were saying. Overwhelmingly people favored Ralph Nader, The caveat was that in Colorado, they expressed fear of Bush and planned to vote for Gore. In Texas, some expressed fear of Gore and were going to vote for Bush while others said the same as Coloradans. Few had the courage to vote for Nader as the polls showed him with little support. They voted out of fear for someone that they generally didn't want. Even the wealthy in the home turf often favored Nader over Bush. The polls never reflected this. Had they asked about who was favored separately from who they planned to vote for, we might have had a very different outcome. To further demonstrate the bias, when some people were called by at least one polling company and they stated that they planned to vote for Nader, the pollsters told them that they would be put down as undecided. Even when the pollees argued that they were not undecided, the pollsters said the same. Hmmmmm. I really wonder what people actually are thinking and feeling about the US and Bush? Sure looks different than what the polls say from this perspective.