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Thread: America Says Let's Win War

  1. #21
    Council Member tequila's Avatar
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    Just to dispel any ideas that I have a political stake in the game myself --- politically I am more on the side of the stay-the-coursers-but-with-50k-more-troops, myself, though I don't have a lot of optimism about how the game will end --- I guess I'm just a natural pessimist.

    As an example, and whether we agree or not, one side is calling for "immediate" withdrawal, and the other proposes staying until we restore order.
    My main contention is that "staying" does not necessarily equate to "restoring order." As an example, we have stayed in Iraq with varying troop levels, including with force levels beyond what the President has proposed with his "surge". The only constant is that violence has trended upwards, both in terms of attacks on coalition forces and attacks on Iraqi civilians. Empirically the relationship between troop presence and levels of disorder is not related as the poll assumes.

  2. #22
    Council Member Stan's Avatar
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    My main contention is that "staying" does not necessarily equate to "restoring order."
    That was kinda - sorta - what I wanted to say. It doesn't match the polling. The recent Chem attacks and rapes would even suggest a trend or shift, or worse, a gradual loss.

  3. #23
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Hi JW,

    Quote Originally Posted by J Wolfsberger View Post
    We may all wind up agreeing to disagree on this one. ....
    My point is that using the language chosen by the various policy advocates to present their position can not be termed push polling. Neither can framing a question in semantically neutral terms: "Restore order" is semantically neutral, since it only requires agreement that there is disorder in Iraq, and requires no agreement on its composition, causes, etc. "... stop the civil war between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis" is not neutral, because it imposes assumptions about the nature of the disorder.
    I suspect you're right about agreeing to disagree. For example, I would argue that "restore order" has a very high semantic reaction index based on both the linguistic assumptions and on its association with the Bush regime, neither of which are neutral. First, there is a linguistic assumption that there was order in the first place ("restore"). Whose order? Saddam Hussein's? The disorder and looting seen after his regime dissolved? Second, I truly doubt that anyone in the world who has been following American politics would consider anything associated as strongly as that phrase to be "neutral" simply because of the other associations with Mr. Bush.

    Marc
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    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
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  4. #24
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    Default Is it really "push" or just the norm and how do you explain...

    As i've said often enough in this thread, I don't think this is too bad and doesn't meet the criteria for push polling.That said, the questions seem to me to be about par for the course ranging from good to ambiguous to perhaps verging on "push" (a concession of sorts?) More interesting is the how do you expalin the divergence question.

    Hard to answer with any degree of surety but I would hypothesize that
    1. Most polls do not ask the question giving any kind of alternative. (In fact, I haven't seen any others that do so.)
    2. This poll poses raises questions of outcome however inelegantly.
    3. Other polls focus on the negative.
    4. The election not only addressed the war but other issues as well.
    None of these are definitive nor even necessarily correct. But they may offer a start at an answer to Tequila's question.

  5. #25
    Council Member Stan's Avatar
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    Thanks John !
    I like this approach but must retire for the evening (7 hours ahead of EST).

    Have a pleasant evening, Stan

  6. #26
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Hi John,

    You've definitely raised some good points. Before I get into some of them, have you seen the age breakdown of respondents?
    3% 18 - 24
    7% 25 - 34
    17% 35 - 44
    23% 45 - 54
    24% 55 - 64
    25% 65 AND ABOVE
    1% REFUSED
    With almost 75% of the respondents 45 and over, I think that this is causing a serious skew. When you also add in that it is only 800 people, I have a feeling that their margin of error is probably a lot more than the claimed +-3.5%, at least in the <45 age group.

    Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
    Hard to answer with any degree of surety but I would hypothesize that
    1. Most polls do not ask the question giving any kind of alternative. (In fact, I haven't seen any others that do so.)
    2. This poll poses raises questions of outcome however inelegantly.
    3. Other polls focus on the negative.
    4. The election not only addressed the war but other issues as well.
    None of these are definitive nor even necessarily correct. But they may offer a start at an answer to Tequila's question.
    I will freely admit to a bias against most survey data for a lot of the reasons you list above. Still, I think some decent inferences could be made from this poll if there was a decent amount of proper analysis. Hey, I'd even be satisfied with some decent cross tabs stratified by age and gender .

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  7. #27
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    Default Marc's interesting observation

    Marc

    I missed that. Even with the caveat that the sample is of "likely voters" I don't recall 75% of likely voters being over 45 years old. So, there may be a significantly greater skew than I had thought.

    John

  8. #28
    Council Member 120mm's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
    Needless to say, I totally disagree. You did not address any of my points, other than to note that you feel the poll's questions are completely fair.

    edit: Also I wonder how you account for the extraordinary difference between what this poll purports to show compared to the numerous other polls conducted around this issue that are linked in this thread. Also compared to the recent election results which saw the President's party lose its Congressional majority.
    Tequila, I'd like maybe an example of what kinds of questions the "neutral" polls ask. I would guess that they were "neutral" in the sense that they collected by a "neutral" press or a "neutral" poller like Zogby.

    In other words, polling "concepts" is fine. When a leftist newspaperman does it, it's tilted to the left. When a rightist political type does it, it's tilted to the right. To claim that only one side is neutral, or one side is tilted would be dishonest or innocent.

    BTW, anyone who thinks that the President's party lost the last election because the Dems were strong is a fool. The Reps were fired because they betrayed their base politically at home, and didn't have success in Iraq, not because they started Iraq.

  9. #29
    Council Member tequila's Avatar
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    The polls I linked earlier also have their questions available for discussion. Note that Zogby works for Republicans as well. More to the point, do you believe that all the pollsters are leftists?

    The Reps were fired because they betrayed their base politically at home, and didn't have success in Iraq, not because they started Iraq.
    No one said that the Reps lost Congress because they started Iraq. I implied that the public is severely dissatisfied with the Rep path on Iraq, as you apparently agree, which largely consists of staying in Iraq until "the job is done".

  10. #30
    Council Member 120mm's Avatar
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    Zogby is demonstrably not very impartial on subjects on or around the Middle East. His "soldiers' poll" of a couple of years ago comes to mind.

    What I believe is that most pollsters are out to make money. And bold, provocative questions get results. I also think pollsters aren't as good at framing questions as they think they are.

    I don't read a whole bunch of polling questions, but the only ones I've ever answered were horrible. Either left out the most obvious responses, or were skewed, whether through ignorance or design.
    Last edited by 120mm; 02-23-2007 at 06:46 PM.

  11. #31
    Council Member SSG Rock's Avatar
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    Default Personally, I don't care what a poll says....

    I know that we can accomplish something positive in Iraq. I don't care about any polls. What worries me is the collective loss of backbone of the American people. The lack of courage in our congress, and the lack of leadership from the White House. If we had a semblance of any of these three at the same time we would have set up the Iraqi government, trained their military and our troops would be back by now.
    Don't taze me bro!

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