DOWNLOADS: (515)

PLAYS: (2852)

Embed

John Fugelsang, filling in for Eliot Spitzer on Current TV this Thursday, had similar issues with a recent Gallup poll on those self-identifying with the term pro-life as Slate's Amanda Marcotte who wrote about that same poll in her column here: The Problem With Polling About Moral Beliefs:

Another year, another Gallup poll on abortion for anti-choicers to misleadingly represent in a bid to deceive the country into believing they're winning in the court of public opinion. Of course, Gallup shares the blame for this travesty, since it publishes its polling results with a lead about the poll that asks if people identify as pro-choice or pro-life. Inevitably, "pro-life" polls well, much better than it would if it were more accurately phrased as "anti-choice" or "anti-abortion," because it's a fuzzy-wuzzy term that deliberately distracts from the legal and sexual freedom issues at the heart of the abortion debate. This year, the poll found that 50 percent of Americans relate to the empty term "pro-life," and only 41 percent to the term "pro-choice."

But if you actually bother to read on, you'll find that Americans are still majority pro-choice, which is why the direct abortion ban in South Dakota and the personhood law in Mississippi went down when put to an actual vote. Scrolling down, you find that only 20 percent of Americans support the anti-choice movement's goal in banning abortion, with 25 percent of Americans supporting abortion rights in all cases, and 52 percent of Americans wanting abortion legal with some restrictions. (Most people imagine a legal regime that will somehow allow abortion for themselves and their friends, but disallow it for those dirty sluts they hear about so much.) This means that only two out of five people who identify as "pro-life" actually align themselves with the so-called pro-life view, demonstrating neatly how useless that term is and why it needs to be replaced with a more accurate term like "anti-abortion," or my preferred term "anti-choice," which encompasses their anti-contraception activism alongside their anti-abortion activism.

Polling Americans on vague beliefs and self-identity doesn't really tell us much in general beyond highlighting how delusional and/or hypocritical our nation is. The reality is that there's a huge gulf between what people claim to believe—even when speaking anonymously to a pollster—and what they actually believe, which is easier to measure when looking at behavior or what kind of policy choices they support. Read on...

John Fugelsang's take below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (205)

PLAYS: (843)

Embed

Polls and the corporate media's immediate instinct to jump all over their results in order to push one of their favorite memes, that America is a "center-right" country, is yet another example of why we do not have a liberal media in the United States. Gallup and USA Today recently released a new poll which you can read the results of here -- Americans See Views of GOP Candidates Closer to Their Own.

Naturally Mrs. Greenspan was more than happy to report that this is supposed to show that most Americans are ideologically aligned with Mitt Romney and that President Obama was further to the left than most of the public.

The poll by Gallup did not ask anyone what their views on specific issues were. They asked them to self-identify what their ideology is. Media Matters did a lengthy report on this back in 2007 showing why polls like the one cited by Andrea Mitchell here don't paint an accurate picture of what most American's political leanings are which you can read here -- The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth.

There are lots of charts and data there, but this portion sums up some of their findings very nicely:

Conclusion

If Americans are so progressive, why don't more say so?

When asked for evidence, advocates of the idea that America is a conservative country will often cite the fact that polls show more people labeling themselves as "conservative" than "liberal." [...]

Yet there are a number of reasons to conclude that the data on self-labeling tells us relatively little about the actual ideological positioning of the public. First, as political scientists have understood for more than 40 years, most Americans simply don't think in ideological terms. To take one example, the National Election Studies has asked respondents in the past, "Would you say that either one of the parties is more conservative than the other at the national level?" The number answering "the Republicans" seldom exceeded 60 percent when the question was asked in the past; after a 12-year hiatus, the NES asked the question again in 2004, when two-thirds of the public, an all-time high, gave the correct answer. This means that, at a time when the parties are more ideologically distinct than ever, one-third of the public can't name correctly which party is more conservative. If this bare minimum of knowledge is unavailable to such a large proportion of the population, it is fair to say that their self-placement on ideological scales will not be a particularly reliable gauge of their actual beliefs on issues.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (204)

PLAYS: (230)

Embed

Rep. Alan Grayson and former Rudy Giuliani staffer and king of the false equivalencies Wingnut author John Avlon had a little dust up over polls on John King's show. Grayson took Avlon to task over a recent Gallup poll which shows President Obama's approval rating down to 38% with independent voters. What I wish he'd have called him out for is his claim that voters are more worried about the debt than jobs and the economy. Since he used the words "independent voters" and didn't say which poll he was citing it's impossible to say if he was cherry picking some statistics.

The larger problem with what Avlon did here is one that Digby pointed out a few weeks ago.

Conflation Fail:

FAIR does an overview of the polls which show that the beltway obsession with the deficit is not, in fact, shared by the country.

But I did want to highlight this one piece of evidence supporting my contention that to the extent people do care about --- they just don't understand it. [...]

This is one of the reasons why I have been so frantic that the administration was feeding into the deficit hysteria. They don't seem to get that people don't actually care about "the deficit," they care about "the economy" and they fail to make a distinction between the two, especially since we have right wing wrecking crew that makes a point of conflating the two.

It's a problem.

Yes it is and people like Avlon here hyping fears over the deficit is just another example.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (171)

PLAYS: (410)

Embed

From The Cafferty File:

There is a fundamental gender gap when it comes to American politics. A new Gallup poll of almost 150,000 people shows women are significantly more likely than men to identify themselves as Democrats.

Consider this: 41 percent of women say they’re Democrats; that’s nine-points higher than the 32-percent of men who say that. 26-percent of women identify themselves as Independents — compared to 34-percent of men. As for those who identify themselves as Republicans, there’s not much of a difference there — 25-percent of women compared to 28-percent of men.

What’s especially interesting here is that the gender gap is evident across all age groups — from 18 to 85-year-olds. Also, it shows up within all major racial, ethnic and marital-status groups.

For example — African-Americans and Asians are more Democratic than whites; but within each of these groups, women are more Democratic than men.

The poll also shows Democrats have their greatest advantage among baby boomers and the very young; and relatively speaking, are the weakest among people in their late 30s and those in their mid-to-late 60s.

Gallup says these findings suggest that by the time young men and women are 18 years old — the different cultural and social factors that determine party identification are already well established.

Here’s my question to you: Why are women more likely to be Democrats?

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (93)

PLAYS: (322)

Embed

Hardball's Big Number: 69% of Americans say they favor allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military. So what's the hold up Mr. President?

DOWNLOADS: (265)

PLAYS: (590)

Embed

From the Cafferty File:

Here’s something that probably keeps the leadership of the Republican Party up at night: A new Gallup poll shows 89 percent of the party’s rank-and-file members are white.

This leaves only 11 percent of Republicans who are Hispanics, African-Americans or members of other races. These numbers are staggering and hardly in keeping with the radically changing face of the U.S.

That’s not all — by more than two-to-one, whites who call themselves Republicans claim a conservative ideology, and about half of them say they’re strongly religious.

Compare that to Democrats — whose party is 64% white and 36 percent non-white. By a ratio of more than four-to-one, white Democrats call themselves moderate or liberal, and only 20 percent of them say they’re highly religious.

Independents land somewhere between the two camps — with 27 percent non-whites.

These numbers pretty much say it all about the GOP’s troubles; and leave little question why Democrats are in control of the White House and both houses of Congress.

The big question: Will the support of white, conservative, religious Americans be enough of a base for Republicans to start winning elections again? Probably not. The alternative is for Republicans to find a way to broaden their appeal among non-whites and whites who are more moderate.

And here’s a hint: The way to accomplish that is probably not with the likes of Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich slinging around negative and hateful rhetoric.

Here’s my question to you: Why does the Republican Party have such a narrow appeal?

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (131)

PLAYS: (326)

Embed

From the Cafferty File:

While Washington looks at trying to solve the nation’s health care crisis, many Americans aren’t waiting. They are willing to take matters into their own hands by seeking medical treatment elsewhere.A new Gallup poll shows 29 percent of those surveyed would consider traveling outside the U.S. for treatment in a foreign country. 24 percent would travel for cancer treatment or diagnosis. 15 percent for a hip or knee replacement. 14 percent for heart bypass surgery. And 10 percent for plastic surgery.

When people are asked if they would consider treatment abroad, assuming the quality was the same and the costs much cheaper, those numbers jump by an average of 12 points.

Medical travel used to be considered a luxury for the rich, but with health care costs at home skyrocketing and an estimated 48 million uninsured Americans, that may no longer be the case. In fact, this poll shows people without insurance are more likely than those with coverage to think about going abroad for medical treatment.

When it comes to regions of the country, those in the West are the most willing to travel while people in the Midwest and South are less likely to go abroad.

Meanwhile if there are improvements in insurance reimbursements, hospital quality and cheaper costs abroad — more Americans could start traveling elsewhere for health care.

Here’s my question to you: Would you be willing to travel to another country to get medical care?

Continue reading »

February 13, 2009 MSNBC HARDBALL