When is a first strike not a first strike?
When it's Anticipatory Retaliation.

August 12, 2005

About Those Approval Polls

Demosophist

Rob on Say Anything makes some valid points about the AP poll that the anti-war movement always cites when they want to make the case that they're now the majority. The party affiliation numbers suggests it's not very representative of either the total or the voting population. He might be going a little too far, however, when he states:

The bottom line is, I’m not sure I’m going to be trusting any more of these polls touted by the media. It just doesn’t seem like any of them are really all that representative of the true opinions and feelings of the people.

Well, it's going to be tough knowing the public attitude and values if we stop conducting polls. And you could tell pretty easily that this AP poll wasn't representative... which suggests that one needn't necessarily be skeptical of all polls. Let's try not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I've helped design a number of academic surveys using reputable firms (like Angus Reid Group) and don't think it's wise to paint with such a broad brush. The cell phone problem is real, but there are countermeasures. And refusals that might bias the results have been around for a long time, so the same corrective measures would work with "don't call" lists. (Legitimate political surveys aren't included in the national "don't call" list anyway.)

By the way, to point out a problem that Rob didn't discuss: one thing that I rarely see mentioned in MSM coverage concerning polls that identify approval or disapproval of Bush's handling of the war is any attempt to distinguish between those who feel we're not sufficiently invested and those who feel we're too invested. Believe it or not there are quite a few folks who think Bush is "too liberal," and that we ought to be not only pressing the war against Syria and Iran, but that we also ought to engage against perfidious Arab media. MSM and the anti-war Left always assume that disapproval signifies "too conservative" (warmongering), which is simply not the case.

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia, Anticipatory Retaliation and The Jawa Report)

Launched by Demosophist at August 12, 2005 06:15 PM | Missile Tracks

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