Lots Of The Polls That Are Fit To Print

Janet Elder of the "All The News" paper has a laugh-out-loud story about what happens when the Times doesn't like a poll result - they bury it:

Same Old Question, Different Answer. Hmmm.

By Janet Elder

THE war in Iraq is the single most important continuing news issue right now. Public opinion about the war is a critical part of that story. That’s why when a finding about the war in a New York Times poll could not be easily explained, the paper went back and did another poll on the very same subject. It turns out the poll had gotten it right. Support for the initial invasion of Iraq, as measured by a question The New York Times/CBS News Poll has asked since December 2003, increased modestly compared with two months ago.

Well, I was duly shocked the second time around, when the Times finally reported it.  But let's press on:

The Times and CBS News conducted a poll from July 9 to July 17 with 1,554 adults, mostly about Hillary Clinton. There were a few questions about the other presidential candidates, about President Bush and about the war, but most of the poll was about Mrs. Clinton.

The polling took place during a week when there was no shortage of news about the war. Congress was debating the war; the Bush administration issued a report saying the Iraqi government had failed to meet many of the benchmarks it was supposed to meet; and prominent Republicans were distancing themselves from Mr. Bush on Iraq. 

In the poll, The Times and CBS News posed a standard question that asks respondents to think back to the invasion. Specifically, the poll asked: “Looking back, do you think the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, or should the United States have stayed out?”

Forty-two percent of those polled said the United States did the right thing, and 54 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. The last time the question was asked, in May, 35 percent said taking military action against Iraq was the right thing and 61 percent said the United States should have stayed out.

The July numbers represented a change. It was counterintuitive. None of the other war-related questions showed change. Mr. Bush’s approval rating had not changed. Nor had approval of his handling of Iraq. The level of support for Mr. Bush’s decision to send more troops to Iraq — the “surge” — was about the same as it had been in past polls. Support for the decision to go to war had risen modestly and nothing else in the poll could explain it.

A Newsweek poll conducted July 11-12 had a similar finding for the same question. But the magazine had not asked its question since December, so it is hard to know whether its current reading measured any recent change.

Once in a while a poll finding doesn’t make sense. Sometimes The Times will wait to publish the results until another poll is taken asking the question again. But such a shift happens rarely with questions like this one, which the paper has asked many times over a long period.

What could explain the change? Perhaps, the answers about the war had inadvertently been influenced by placing them a few questions away from one about Mrs. Clinton’s not having repudiated her decision in 2002 to vote to authorize the war.

It was just a hunch, but it was all there was. Along with CBS News, The Times decided to poll again, to ask the war trend question without the possible influence of the question about Mrs. Clinton.

So let's see - this was interesting enough to justify a re-poll, even though a contemporaneous Newsweek poll offered support.  But did they print the initial result as a news-making item of interest?

Please.  In the latest reporting, the only two poll results mentioned are from May 18-23 and July 20-22; the earlier July result is unreported.

And might diligent readers of the initial "complete" Hillary poll have noted the eye-catching result?  Again, don't be daft - the questions skip from number 97, about Hillary, to number 101, about Iraq.  And question 101 is, paraphrased, "How are things going in the attempt to bring stability to Iraq?".  That question is number 7 in the July 23 poll (ands shows a result for July 9-17); the "was invasion the right thing" query is number 6 in the July 23 poll.

So in their latest polling sequence, the "right thing" question immediately precedes the
"bring stability" question; in the July 19 poll, the numbers are out of sequence and the "right thing" is nowhere to be found.

Just as Ms. Elder has reported, the Times really did flush that first result down the memory hole.

Well.  To be fair, the Times has featured the Janet Elder revelation on the front of the Week in Review, and apparently also ran it on July 25, so I suspect they have a sense that they will be catching flak for this.  And there is a "damned if you do" factor here as well - publishing a curious poll result and then rebutting it in a new special poll would also have prompted howls of outrage.

But isn't it good to know that the Times will carefully suppress and doublecheck good news for Bush as it emerges?  i know none of us want them to print good news for Bush only to have to run a correction (or confirmation!) a few days later.

And do any amongst us doubt that the Times would be equally diligent about sitting on good news for the Dems until it could be verified?  I am sure they have done so many times, but just never called it to our attention, and of course there is really no way to monitor them - puzzling results seem to be pretty much fully suppressed, with only the question numbers available to indicate a missing question.

But really - where is the trust?

As to the underlying question - the latest Iraq film the Times is promoting seems to support the notion that the war in Iraq was winnable at the outset but lost due to ghastly mistakes in the initial post-liberation reconstruction phase (too few troops for security, de-B'aathification, disbanding the Iraqi army and breaking up the Iraqi leadership council spring to mind).

So maybe the idea that the invasion was plausible but the reconstruction was bungled is taking hold.

Comments

[kim]

The Left is just hopelessly dissonant about terror.
===========================

[windansea]

one mans dissonance is another mans heresy

[Seixon]

I think the position that the war was the right thing, though mistakes were made, is probably the most logical. That's pretty much my position on the issue, anyways.

I'm also of the opinion that in a war of such proportions, mistakes will be made. That's just a fact of life. That doesn't excuse mistakes that were made, but serves to point out the absurdness of expecting perfection.

[PaulL]

I'm tired of "mistakes were made." Mistakes are impossible to avoid in any aspect of life, and especially in a war with millions of variables. So what? Could we come up with anything more obvious or irrelevant?

All one needs to do is ponder any situation in Iraq, consider if it had been handled differently, and imagine possible outcomes.

Would the press have loved it if Rumsfeld had ordered that looters be machine-gunned down, for example? Hmmm, I bet not.

Would the press have embraced Sadaam's men running the country, or would they have questioned why we had a war in the first place if we were going to leave Baathists in power?

Or if Pres. Bush had forced a US-written constitution on them, or a US-chosen government?

Et cetera.

Powell's doctrine of overwhelming force was exposed for the clap-trap that it was, with the incredibly fast invasion and overthrow of Sadaam.

Overwhelming force is not the way to go with an insurgency, however. The press likes to conflate the two issues, to support the "Powell Good, Rumsfeld Bad" position.

[PaulL]

Oops, strike that "however" in the last paragraph, and make it a "surely even Powell would agree on that."

[BarbaraS]

I don't believe in polls, especially those put out by the media. They are always skewed to the dems. And, what difference does it make that Bush's numbers are 34% or even 29%? He's not going to run again and he will still be president on January 19, 2009. What difference does it make that the public does not want to continue the Iraq war? Bush will not pull out before he wants to. That is why he was elected. To protect us from the Islamofascists. He would be extremely careless if he hasn't stashed away the funds to continue it, especially remembering what the dems did in Viet Nam.

The dems would love to be able to say that the Iraq war and indeed the GWOT is a Bush disaster and are diligently working toward that goal. I read from a poster a day or so ago that if we want to win a war we need to go in and win it immediately before the left can join the enemy. This has proved to be correct in regard to the Iraq war.

[MikeS]

The NYT and some other ‘news’ organizations, in the first days of operations in Afghanistan, adopted the “quagmire and failure narrative.” After the fall of Baghdad, this was modified to the “exit strategy and failure narrative.”

The NYT and these ‘news’ organizations promote their narrative aggressively. They do this not only by cherry picking, or ignoring, or spinning news stories, but sometimes by printing lies and doctored photographs.

The news about polls reflecting support for the Iraq War is really that support hasn’t changed much in the last 2 years or so. March 2005

The problem with that fact is that it debunks another of the NYT narratives, that the Iraq War is becoming progressively more unpopular.

[Cecil Turner]

I'm tired of "mistakes were made." Mistakes are impossible to avoid in any aspect of life, and especially in a war with millions of variables. So what? Could we come up with anything more obvious or irrelevant?

No kidding. And the common charges are mostly unprovable or nonsensical. For example, we couldn't have put in "several hundred thousand troops" if we'd had to, nor is there any proof it'd have helped, nor could we have kept the army together (nor use them with any confidence if we had).

Moreover, there is a raft of absolute silliness on anything having to do with the Administration and war . . . witness the latest on the Tillman case:

The doctors — whose names were blacked out — said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

Bad news for the docs . . . spend a couple days at the range and you'll find that spacing is a better indicator of marksman skill than the distance from which rounds are fired. There's also a big deal made from a Chaplain who supposedly contradicts the nearest eyewitness, but a subsequent interview suggests the Chaplain's report was just incomplete (and slightly off). From all this, the many veterans at DKos have deduced he was murdered for spouting Chomsky. Brilliant.

The fact that our national media gives this sort of thing air time is a perfect illustration of their complete cluelessness on martial matters . . . and their desire to use it for political mileage. There are a few who appear to be enemy-sympathizer propagandists, but mostly they're just willfully stupid on the subject. And any responsible viewing of their product requires that be kept firmly in mind.

[maryerose]

Our plain Dealer newspaper had a prominent article debunking the chaplain.

[Patrick Tyson]

The invasion itself was an honest mistake. The aftermath, given that and the results of elections in the United States in November of 2004 and November of 2006, shouldn't be seen as all that surprising. I wrote a long time ago that the cost to the United States in blood, treasure and good will will have been worth it if a couple of years after the United States substancially withdraws its troops (which will happen before the end of this decade,) Iraq is governed more like Japan than like Cuba. That remains my opinion.

[Sara]

Iraq Soccer Team defeats Saudi Arabia 1-0 to win the 2007 AFC Asian Cup Finals. Big celebrations. This is major. Sports will do more for national unity than all the politicians or soldiers could ever hope to do.

[Neo]

There is no mystery here as to why this poll came out the way it did, especially if you link in Hillary.

If you ever have been in one of these polls, you know that it seems like they go on forever. I have personally hung up half way through more than one of these polls, so who is likely to hang in there when other might just drop out ? The answer revolves around those other "Hillary" questions .. it is Hillary supporters. Seeing as Hillary has never repudiated her Iraq War vote, most Hillary supporters would like to believe that she and the invasion were the right thing to do.

[Ralph L]

Why did it take a hundred questions to get to Iraq? Silly poll.

[MikeS]

Silly poll.

And they ask the wrong questions. They should ask,

Do you believe that immediate withdrawal from Iraq will help or harm the country?

Do you think it will help or harm al-Qaeda?

[hit and run]

MikeS:
They should ask,

Do you believe that immediate withdrawal from Iraq will help or harm the country?

From Rasmussen:

If the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, will the U.S. be safer than it is today, less safe or about as safe as today?

Safer than Today
17%

Less Safe than Today
38%

About as Safe as Today
38%

And this is in that link as well:

The survey also found that 39% say the terrorist will be stronger than they are today if U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq. Forty-one percent (41%) say the terrorists will remain as strong as they are today while just 12% believe the terrorists will be in a weaker position.

Fifty percent (50%) of Americans believe that withdrawing the troops will leave the Iraqi people less safe than they are today. Only 10% believe the Iraqi people will be safer while 33% believe little will change for the Iraqi’s.

[TerryeL]

I think that people are beginning to spend more time thinking about what might actually happen if we just leave Iraq.

[eric]

Now that most people see that anything written or expressed by the Jayson Blair Times is automatically suspect, it renders unnecessary the need to even treat it as serious news.

Democrats win polls, and then are shocked that republicans win presidential elections.

I found your blog while browsing Patrick Ruffini's political site. I am also on there.

I am contacting political bloggers since I am one as well. My blog is www.blacktygrrrr.wordpress.com

If you like the columns, let me know if you are up to a link exchange, since I get some pretty decent traffic. Cross promotion is a win win for common sense political bloggers.

Also, I am competing at the bloggers choice awards, in the political category.

http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/21020
Please vote for me IF AND ONLY IF you feel my blog is of a high quality.

eric

[Joe Citizen]

I find this post to be rather incoherent.

The basic message is that the NYT buries unfavorable polls.

But of course, they not only did not bury it, they reported it - repolled the question because it seemed to be possibly a fluke, then wrote a story about how they did all that, concluding that the change is real.

And the conclusion is that they "bury" these results? You wouldnt have the material for this post if it wasnt for the fact that they did NOT bury it, they even explained the whole process.

What be you smokin' man?

[MikeS]

The basic message is that the NYT buries unfavorable polls.

I think you're mistaken. The basic message is that the NYT has taken a position and is advocating for that position rather than reporting the facts.

[kim]

Noel Sheppard on Newsbusters has an interesting article about a Chris Matthews show with a bunch of liberals regretting what might happen with a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. There were unexpected sentiments. I can't help but wonder if the utter cynicism of the New York Times editorial several weeks ago about the aftermath might not have pricked a few consciences.

h/t Kim Priestap
===========

[windansea]

A War We Might Just Win

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

the last place you'd look

[windansea]

ahhh I understand now, just in case we win the left will reduce victory to "sustainable stability"

[sylvia]

That was a good article on the progress on Iraq. At the minimum, we have surely learned many lessons this time on how to deal with an insurgency and how to try to rebuild a country that we can use for next time, if we are forced to.

I agree that I think the upsurge in opinion is coming as the election debates are continuing and people are starting to really examine this situation again and, contrary to what the Dems think will happen, the people are listening to the debates and are confronted about the few good alternatives there are, other than moving forward.

[Bill in AZ]

Polls only serve to tell the leftist media where to put emphasis, how good they are doing with their propaganda, and where they are screwing up and losing credibility (heh heh - remember global warming?)