The ABC/WaPo Poll is Crap

I wrote surveys for years and the question before the key question was entirely inappropriate. No wonder they got that bizarre result -- I did a doubletake when I read it. You can easily skew the answer to one question by the ones that come before it, and they asked people if it was important to investigate terrorism even if they have to give up some undefined amount of privacy. They made it sound like there was already a known/identified threat as opposed to datamining.

In any case, however, they should not have released this poll result today. It flunks the most basic of smell tests, and not because we don’t like the result, but because it doesn’t jive with other known data. It is a mystery as to why any firm would release this survey result when we know that the public was divided right down the middle over international wiretaps defined as having suspected Al Qaeda members on one end of the line. CNN reported this all day yesterday. The premise that more people would disapprove of those forms of taps than domestic surveillance of citizen’s day-to-day communications activities is simply unbelievable. A basic rule of research is to ask yourself, when the result is in, if you believe it and if it seems reasonable relative to other known surveys and facts. If the answer is no, you scrutinize your work and either fix the error that you believe caused the flawed result or you run it again to make sure you didn’t end up with a screwy sample and, at the very least, release the data later when you have validated the unusual result. There is not a seasoned survey professional in existence that has not gone through this drill.

Why did they publish it? The more skeptical among us will say it was deliberate propaganda. The more practical among us will say that it was news organizations trying to beat other news organizations to the punch and getting out first trumped the validity of the data. Others will say it’s because the groups are inept at such activities and too arrogant to recognize the result is implausible. Whatever the case, it’s a shame that it happened because headlines about public opinion tend to sway public opinion.


edits: typos

I don't know, of course, because they were in a rush to get this poll out and maybe they just shor-circuited, but if you were going to skew one, this would be the way to do it. I have seen many posts about the key question and how it should be rewritten, but to be honest, those rewrites are to make people lean our way. It's not the key question that's the bad one, it's the one that comes right before it. Those four questions are appropriate, appropriate, inappropriate, appropriate and a quick review of it looks balanced until you look at question three.

If you were going to skew it, this is the way to do it because all the headlines are on the key question, which is very carefully constructed, and no one sees that just before the respondent was asked the million-dollar question, they were forced to choose between investigating "terrorist threats" even if it means giving up privacy. WTF? Seriously, :wtf: You kill that question and you get a different result. This is like the kock on your door from the surveyor who gets you to affirm that you are environmentally conscious and worried about poltuion and, voila, the Rainbow salesman is on your doorstep with the product that will save you from the dust mites in your house.

On its surface, it sounds reasonable. As soon as you start to think how it could be abused, it sounds totally illegal and unconstitutional. I have a feeling that polls next week will show a completely different result.

The question was poorly phrased, but I doubt they were trying to get a prearranged result. Remember, this story is only 30 hours old now. It was only 12 hours old when the poll was conducted.

I'm sorry but......:spank:


and :banghead:

Even on the surface this does NOT sound reasonable! We are living in very scary times here, please save yourself and STOP making excuses for stupid people and a complicit media.

obtaining their phone records without their permission! This is why I logged on to DU, I found the poll results so Frigging UNBELIEVABLE that I thought I must have misunderstood. Is this the poll you are speaking about? Link? The results are simply NOT credible! Who did they poll? Faux news viewers ONLY? It has been proven by Zogby that all who watch Faux, are incredibally biased.

Don't waste your short life with such pursuits.

Take up knitting.

burying your head in the sand and denying 'reality'?

What's so "denying reality" about that?

is REALITY!

question right before the key question is out of line in any case. I read them on one of the other threads and it has been pissing me off all morning so I started this thread. It's one thing to screw up a survey, and another to release the results even when you know they don't jive with other known data...

is why I logged on. Does the M$M even think independently anymore, or are they just spoon-fed regurgitated disinformation?

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/abc_phone_surveillance_060512.pdf

saying: "Vindication for Bush" ...I friggin' kid you not!!!! I was
enraged when I heard it. They then went to commercial, came back to
tell about this so called "vindication"....

it had to do with this poll, that people are ok with having their
calls traced/tracked...and some other figure that 50% or so believe he
is not compromising their privacy...

I wanted to bang my head against the steering wheel! My 14 year old was
in the car shaking his head in shock when I explained that every phone call
in the US is now tracked by the government...and that people were ok with this!
Even my 14 year old could see how nuts this is.

I don't get it. I just don't get it.

There is no doubt that the intent of the pollsters was to skew results and then use the BushCo media outlets to hammer it home. Just listen to any radio station today at the top of the hour and you will hear this poll mentioned.

disconnect from reality. And this by the administration that 'pays no attention to poll results', right?

:sarcasm:

Make it plausible there is some support for this
horse crap...

Makes people doubt themselves.

Make us believe we're a minority, like they did after 911 and around elections. It was NEVER true. See Abramoff on push polls:

that everyone's okay with it, so they all become okay with it...

now. Outing themselves, as usual.

"appropriate party," whoever that is.

Rush, do you mind the government taping the calls with your drug dealer?

And for regular people, not fat ass druggies, does the government have a right to tape calls between you and your mother.

When these ass clowns find out the calls to their mistress is being recoded they will be pissed.

This is still post 9/11, post the election. Now the government is spying on people and they're less concerned? There is a disconnect somewhere.

it was PROPAGANDA in it's finest form.... No doubt about it.....:mad:

that said 56% of americans thought it was right that the press reported the story.

:sarcasm:

don't journalists of all people see how ridiculous it is to
have everything traced..The potential for ABUSE is huge!



edit: spelling

If you look at the polls yesterday from ABC, AOL, etc. the numbers were running between 80 and 90% of the respondents were against the record keeping and datamining. Sure, granted, these were instantaneous, internet, wide open poll, but with numbers like that one can be fairly confident that the vast majority of Americans are against having their phone records in the hands of Bushco.

But yesterday, they started the spin machine up quick, by trotting out the boy king himself bright and early, and it has continued for the past thirty six hours. They got their army of talking heads to jump start the echo chamber, and these polls like WaPo and it's ilk are just one more piece of the spin puzzle. You simply don't have a fifty percent drop in a position overnight, especially when people are as pissed about this as the American public is right now. Talk with your friend, family, neighbors, co-workers, both liberal and conservative. See how many are pissed. Frankly I've yet to find a single person on the right or left whom I've talked to who isn't up in arms about this. And I imagine that your experience will be the same. Sure, there are the rare neo-cons who've overdosed on the fascist Kool-Aid, but those are few and far between.

These polls are simply an attempt at damage control. They're put out there to try and make people feel isolated and aren't on the winning side of this issue, to wear them down with the tried and true marketing tactic of peer pressure. Don't fall for it and don't let people you know fall for it.

The goals of propaganda and PSYOPS are not only to deceive, but to instill a sense of confusion that leads to hesitation and paralysis. BushCo has done it quite well on issues ranging from the theft of the 2004 election to the Iraq war and now with the NSA's domestic spy program.

types of polls for decades -- I advise her research group on certain matters -- and when I told her about the results, she said, "I don't believe them." When I read the questions to her, she could not believe they had that leading question in front that tips the second question. Her response: "Anyone who does this work knows it's wrong to ask that question before the main one. They knew what they were doing. That was too big for a mistake." She was disappointed because she likes the Post, but would not give them the benefit of the doubt on it because you simply do not force that value judgement ahead of your key question. It drove respondents to that answer.