Beacon Broadside

David W. Moore & George F. Bishop: 2010 Top Ten Dubious Polling Awards

Today's post is from David W. Moore and George F. Bishop. Moore is a Senior Fellow with the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. He is a former Vice President of the Gallup Organization and was a senior editor with the Gallup Poll for thirteen years. He is author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls.  Bishop is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Graduate Certificate Program in Public Opinion & Survey Research at the University of Cincinnati. His most recent book is The Illusion of Public Opinion: Fact and Artifact in American Public Opinion Polls.

Every year, poll watchers are confronted with poll results and commentary that defy either logic or science, often raising questions about the very utility of polls. Typically, the problems are not with the method of conducting polls, but with the pollsters themselves -- as they focus on what they believe is entertaining and appealing to the audience rather than an accurate reflection of public opinion. In the process, pollsters can manipulate public opinion or write commentary that makes a mockery of what the public is really thinking.

With this article, veteran pollsters, authors and political scientists George F. Bishop and David W. Moore issue their Second Annual Top Ten "Dubious Polling" Awards. These awards are intended to mark for posterity some of the most risible and outrageous pronouncements by polling organizations during the previous year.

Each award is ranked, from a low of one set of crossed fingers to a high of five sets. Pollsters generally know in their hearts when all is not right with their polls, but they (figuratively) cross their fingers and hope that no one notices anything amiss. The five crossed-fingers icon is the ultimate in wishful thinking, perhaps the equivalent of football's "Hail Mary pass" for the truly untrustworthy poll.

David W. Moore: Those Bobbleheaded Polls on Health Care

Today's post is from David W. Moore, author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls (out in hardcover now, paperback with a new afterword available this fall). Moore is a senior fellow of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, and he is a former senior editor of the Gallup Poll, where he worked for thirteen years. He frequently contributes to Huffington Post, and blogs at SkepticalPollster.com, where this post also appeared.

A recent series of polls brings to mind a bobblehead doll, whose head wags from side to side and from front to back in a random fashion. That disconnected movement seems to be a visual representation of what the polls have been saying about the general public and its views of President Obama's efforts to reform the health care system.

Before the president's nationally televised speech to a joint session of Congress earlier this month, for example, several polls announced that either a majority or plurality of Americans disapproved of the president's performance on health care. They didn't tell us if the people were dissatisfied because he was trying to do too much, or because he wasn't trying to do enough. All we got was the dismal information about how the public felt let down by the president.

Then, on the Friday after Obama's speech, a CBS poll declared that the public had rallied in favor of the president. A majority of the public now approved of his handling of health care by a 14-point margin, compared to a week earlier when a plurality disapproved by a 7-point margin. That represented a 21-point swing in opinion, which is no mean feat for one speech. (For all poll results, see pollingreport.com.)

David W. Moore: Likely Voters and Mid-Term Elections, Part II (The 1934 Mid-Term Election)

Today's post is from David W. Moore, author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls (out in hardcover now, paperback with a new afterword available this fall). Moore is a senior fellow of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. A former senior editor of the Gallup Poll, where he worked for thirteen years, Moore also served as professor of political science at UNH and is the founder and former director of the UNH Survey Center.

In my earlier post (Part I) on this subject, I suggested it would be a political miracle if Democrats did not lose U.S. House seats in the 2010 election. A major reason is that in mid-term elections, the voters most likely to turn out are those who are disgruntled with the policies of the incumbent president, rather than his supporters. In fact, since Democrats and Republicans first began vying against each other for Congress in the mid-19th Century, the president's party has lost seats in mid-term elections, relative to the "out" party, all but three times-- 1934, 1998 and 2002.

The two most recent times seem to be special situations that are likely to have little relevance for 2010. The 2002 mid-term election saw the president's party pick up a few seats, probably because the country was still rallying around the flag in reaction to the terrorist attacks the previous year. President Bush's approval rating was still high (Gallup showed it at 68 percent in a poll conducted Nov. 8-10, 2002).

And the 1998 mid-term election found voters quite dissatisfied with the Republicans' vote to impeach President Clinton, apparently a major reason why the president's party was able to pick up a few House seats. In both years, the Republicans enjoyed slim majorities, and the changes did not affect their majority control.

If neither of the two exceptions just noted appear to have much relevance to what might happen in 2010, the third exception (the first chronologically) is a different story. Taking place just two years after President Roosevelt came into office during the Great Depression, the 1934 mid-term election campaign focused largely on the New Deal measures adopted by Congress. The result was a net increase of 9 seats for the president's party-- from 313 to 322. Democrats today no doubt hope that a similar debate about the economic stimulus bills and health care reform will be a positive inducement for voters next year.

David W. Moore: Likely Voters and Mid-Term Elections, Part I

Today's post is from David W. Moore, author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls (out in hardcover now, paperback with a new afterword available this fall). Moore is a senior fellow of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. A former senior editor of the Gallup Poll, where he worked for thirteen years, Moore also served as professor of political science at UNH and is the founder and former director of the UNH Survey Center.

It would be a political miracle if the Democrats did not lose seats in the 2010 Congressional elections, yet the polls so far suggest that scenario is doubtful at best. I think it's because most polls are providing a rosier picture for the Democrats by reporting voting intentions of the general public, or registered voters, rather than the much smaller segment of "likely voters" that will ultimately turn out to cast a ballot.

That the Democrats will almost certainly lose House seats in 2010 is attested to by several factors. The most important, of course, is that since the advent of the current two party system (Republicans and Democrats), the party of the president almost always loses seats in a mid-term election. The best theory for this phenomenon is that disgruntled people (i.e., those who identify with the "out" party) are more motivated to cast a protest vote than the relatively satisfied people (i.e., those who identify with the party of the president) are to cast a vote of support.

The second factor is that, in the wake of the protracted war in Iraq and the sagging economy, Democrats won many seats in 2006 and 2008 that would "normally" go to Republicans. In 2010, with Bush gone and a Democratic administration in charge, Democratic House members in those "normally" Republican seats are going to be quite vulnerable.

The final factor is that as a general rule, Republicans are more likely to turn out than Democrats, because Republicans tend to be higher on the socio-economic scale – generally more educated, with higher incomes, and more actively involved in politics than Democrats.

So, if all of these reinforcing factors suggest the Republicans are likely to gain seats, why aren't the polls showing that? After the jump, some interesting recent poll results (see pollingreport.com).

David W. Moore: Gallup’s Anti-Health Care Bias

Today's post is from David W. Moore, author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls (out in hardcover now, paperback with a new afterword available this fall). Moore is a senior fellow of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. A former senior editor of the Gallup Poll, where he worked for thirteen years, Moore also served as professor of political science at UNH and is the founder and former director of the UNH Survey Center.

The Gallup Poll is without doubt one of the most influential media polls in the country, and as such one would hope that its analysis of public opinion would be objective. Usually that is the case. But on the current subject of healthcare reform, especially its most recent article that presents "key findings from Gallup surveys" on the issue, the post reads like a conservative manifesto for delaying legislation until it succumbs to a slow death.

Having worked at Gallup for 13 years until 2006, I know that everyone who writes the stories makes a valiant effort to be objective. Sometimes, however, because of a blind spot or perhaps personal preferences, an article is not as balanced as it should be. That certainly is the case with Gallup's recent post, "Americans on Healthcare Reform: Top 10 Takeaways."

The piece presents a series of public opinion findings, all of which reinforce the overall theme that "Americans may have hit the slowdown button" on healthcare reform. But there are many other public opinion findings that contradict that general conclusion. Listed below are some of the most salient assertions by Gallup, followed by examples from other polls which lead to much different interpretations of what the public is thinking. (The Gallup poll analysis is found on its website, while the other results can be found at pollingreport.com, unless otherwise noted.)

David W. Moore: Obama, the Public, and Health Care

Today's post is from David W. Moore, author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls (out in hardcover now, paperback with a new afterword available this fall). Moore is a senior fellow of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. A former senior editor of the Gallup Poll, where he worked for thirteen years, Moore also served as professor of political science at UNH and is the founder and former director of the UNH Survey Center.

A recent ABC/Washington Post poll reported slipping support for President Obama's efforts to reform health care. In April of this year, polls showed 57 percent approval to 29 percent disapproval of the way the president is handling health care, compared to a 49 percent to 44 percent ratio in mid-July. That's an 8-point decline in approval and a 15-point increase in disapproval.

The same poll also showed that, by a 55 percent to 43 percent margin, Americans support a health care reform plan that is roughly what the president is requesting.

What's going on? If Americans support the president's health care plan, and it is now that he is pushing the Congress to pass legislation enacting reform, why is the president's popularity on this issue declining?

The public's growing disenchantment is especially surprising, because last April the president was hardly focused on health care at all, his attention mostly on getting a stimulus bill passed through Congress. Yet, if we believe the polls, his approval on health care was higher when he was not fully engaged in getting health care legislation passed (which the public wants) than when he is fully engaged!

David W. Moore: Sarah Palin and Her Future Political Prospects

Today's post is from David W. Moore, author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls (out in hardcover now, paperback with a new afterword available this fall). Moore is a senior fellow of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. A former senior editor of the Gallup Poll, where he worked for thirteen years, Moore also served as professor of political science at UNH and is the founder and former director of the UNH Survey Center.

If we believe the recent USA Today/Gallup poll, Sarah Palin's standing among Republicans as a presidential candidate in 2012 has actually improved as a consequence of her stunning announcement that she would resign as Alaska's governor at the end of July. So counterintuitive is this finding, it was picked up by many pundits and journalists, including Wolf Blitzer on CNN's The Situation Room, and Frank Rich in last Sunday's New York Times.

As Rich noted, the poll reported that "no less than 71 percent of Republicans said they would vote for her for president."

Don't believe it! The poll is typical of many media polls, whose major objective is to provide fodder for the news, quite often at the expense of an accurate picture of what the public is really thinking.

After the jump, some reasons to be skeptical of the poll.

David W. Moore: Five Reasons Why The Iranian Pre-Election Poll Can't Be Trusted

Today's post is from David W. Moore, author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls (out in hardcover now, paperback with a new afterword available this fall). Moore is a senior fellow of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. A former senior editor of the Gallup Poll, where he worked for thirteen years, Moore also served as professor of political science at UNH and is the founder and former director of the UNH Survey Center.

Over the past several days, according to the New York Times and other news sources, millions of protesters in Iran have taken to the streets to express their opposition to the official results of last week's disputed presidential election. So widespread is the protest that the country's Guardian Council has ordered an investigation into the election, and even invited the three losing candidates to meet with Council members.

Earlier this week, however, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty, who claimed that a scientific pre-election poll in Iran, conducted "three weeks" before the balloting (in fact, it was four weeks), presaged incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's official landslide victory. If we can believe the poll, and the authors' arguments, it's plausible that Ahmadinejad did in fact win the election with more than 60 percent of the vote.

But don't be fooled. The same poll results can be used – and just as persuasively – to argue that the Iranian election was stolen, as can be used to argue the opposite viewpoint.

In fact, there are at least five (somewhat overlapping) reasons why we can't trust that poll. But first, some background.