Monday, February 6, 2012

Phony job numbers, phony poll numbers

  So you might have heard there's a little hanky panky going on with the BLS's 8.3% unemployment number dropped on Friday. We're seeing the obligatory gushing today over how great Obama is for creating all those jobs!
  Right on cue, the psyops campaign continues, with a poll out showing Obama up over the not-nominee from the Republican party.
  So how accurate was that poll, dutifully conducted by WaPo/ABC, Hot Air notes that the poll takers are unnecessarily vague about whom they polled, since likely voters don't tend to sample the same way the population does:
More importantly, though, the poll series has dropped its reporting of partisan identification within their samples.  It’s the second time that the poll has not included the D/R/I split in its sample report, and now it looks as though this will be policy from this point forward.  Since this is a poll series that has handed double-digit partisan advantages to Democrats in the past (for instance, this poll from April 2011 where the sample only had 22% Republicans), it’s not enough to just hear “trust us” on sample integrity from the Washington Post or ABC.
  Karl at Patterico follows up Hot Air's observations, though he's somewhat critical of HA's conclusions, noting that Romney's getting lots more coverage and lots more negative coverage than Obama right now (which probably won't change).
the underlying dynamic in this poll is probably similar to that seen in the PPP poll: it’s not about Obama as much as it is about Romney. Q25 in this poll shows 52% say that the more they hear about Romney, the less they like him, which is not as bad as Newt Gingrich’s 60%, but still bad.  This is a function of the campaign and its media coverage.  Technically, Romney gets marginally better coverage than Obama… but Romney is getting more coverage than Obama.   Thus, people are hearing more negative coverage of Romney than Obama.  Obviously, the balance will shift once the GOP nominee is effectively known.  
  Even more interesting, Karl links over to HuffPo, where a Democrat pollster/writer points out that negative questions about Romney were asked of the poll participants. No negative questions were asked about Obama.
  Of course.
  All part of the psyops campaign being waged by both the media and the Obama campaign. 

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