Summit Poll Spinning
Mark Blumenthal | March 1, 2010
Topics: Health Care Reform , Health care reform summit
My column for this week looks at surprisingly extensive discussion of poll results at last weeks health care reform summit. My conclusion:
In some ways, the summit's polling conversation mirrors the way pundits and partisans have talked about public opinion all along. We have certainly not suffered from a shortage of polls. According to its editor, Tom Silver, the nonpartisan Polling Report has published results of health policy questions asked (or tracked) 1,168 times since March 2009.
But rather than accept the often conflicting hopes, anxieties and preferences those polls measure, compounded by less-than-universal awareness of the policy details, partisans prefer to cherry-pick whatever number purports to show the "American people" on their side.
Please click through to read the whole thing.
As noted in the column, Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport has already published a review of the origins of the poll numbers referenced at the summit (to the extent that he could identify them). Two related items that appeared over the weekend: Yesterday's New York Times includes as assessment by Dalia Sussman of the differences that question wording can make in health reform polling. Her review drew a reaction from AAPOR member Jan Werner.
By Mark Blumenthal | March 1, 2010 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)
Comments
To me, the most agregious use of the polls is to pick individual components and declare that since people like that item, they must therefore like the entire package.
It would be like saying that because an overwhelming majority of people like cars to have seats in them that this big ugly barely running wreck of a car for $365,000 is what people want because it has seats - and a steering wheel; another popular item.
We are so saturated with polls and have so many organizations pushing their agenda via polls they manipulate that the only way to get a picture of what opinion really is is to find sites like this that provide composites.
Posted on March 1, 2010 2:27 PM
Wow, pretty great to see all these Republicans touting poll results. This means they're going to support sampling in the census, right?
Posted on March 1, 2010 3:47 PM
Wagner, is anyone even saying that? The only argument I know of that's at all similar to that is that people like *all* of the major components of the bill, except for one or two (like the individual mandate), so they *should* like the overall bill. But they don't, which is mostly blamed on a poor job of messaging by the Democrats.
I hope you're not intentionally distorting things to stab the strawman.
Posted on March 1, 2010 6:19 PM
AySz88, I think people are saying exactly that. If you look at the Newsweek poll in the links provided above you see them manipulating the poll to first split out popular items and then combine them back into the entire bill to see if the opinion changes. They are very close to crossing the line into a push poll.
I heard many of the bill's supporters quoting polls that "the overwhelming majority" of Americans want healthcare reform. True, but the overwhelming majority of Americans don't want this bill. I heard democrats quoting how many people support eliminating pre-existing condition clauses. I heard them quoting how almost everyone wants a public option.
Some might be using the word "should" but are implying "do". I agree that it is a poor job of messaging by the democrats. You seem to think they had a problem getting the real message out there and I think they had a problem that the real message did get out there. I would be more inclined to say that they have a spin problem. People know more about this bill than they have ever known about any major legislation.
The point is that there is so much cherry-picking pieces out of polls. A support person who quotes that 70% of people support a bill that reduces the deficit don't quote from that same poll that shows that 70% don't believe the claim that this one will.
It's nothing new. Politicians have cherry-picked poll results for years. Now that there are more polls than ever, they'll do it even more.
Posted on March 2, 2010 10:14 AM
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