America Says Let's Win War

[tequila]

Additional details.

Note that POS (illustrative acronym ... ) is a Republican house polling firm that often does "push polling" as well as normal opinion polling. The NYPOST is a right-wing Rupert Murdoch rag that is widely regarded as the worst newspaper in the NY market, exceeded only in its hackery by the neocon-favoring NY SUN. The sports section ain't bad, though.

More details on the poll here.

[John T. Fishel]

Tequila--

If you look at the information about the poll and the questions asked, it is both pretty solid and quite conventional. The questions are clear. The same thing is asked several times in a variety of ways and the answers are consistent. And the margin of error is stated relatively conservatively.

As one who has done some survey research, I have no problem with this.

Cheers

John

[tequila]

That's why I included the poll data itself, so folks can judge. I thought some of the questions betray some push-poll stuff, and also the demographics of the poll lean heavily white, but otherwise not terrible. Nonetheless the origins of the poll are worth noting.

[120mm]

And the New York Times is pure as the driven snow....

[tequila]

Compared to the polling outfit of a political party?

[Merv Benson]

Actually party polling is usually kept in house and is considered much more accurate than Newspaper polls, because more is at stake. One of the problems with most of the media polls is they tend poll "satisfaction" instead of what results people want. Similar misleading polling was done after the Tet offensive, and when more details were added it turned out that a majority were either "satisfied" with the war policy or wanted a more aggressive policy. The one who wanted to lose were in a minority. I think that is still the case with the Iraq war. My poll question would be real simple--"Do you want to lose the war in Iraq?"

[tequila]

Merv - There are two types of polling done. One is normal opinion polling, whose goal is to ascertain the true state of public opinion. The other is "push polling", where questions are asked similar to the one you ask, whose goal is to elicit a defined response and shape opinion rather than understand it.