The Doom & Gloom Polling

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An interesting analysis today by David Lambro about the contradictions in polling:

Voters are said to be in a sour, anti-Republican mood this year, but some polls have contradictory findings that indicate voters aren’t thrilled with the Democrats either and could change their minds by Election Day.

The latest right track/wrong track survey by independent pollster John Zogby finds that only 34 percent of likely voters think “the United States is going in the right direction, while 59 percent said the country is on the wrong track.”

That finding in a national survey conducted from Aug. 11 to 15, is in line with most other polls that signal Republican losses in the midterm congressional elections, campaign analysts say.

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll of 1,001 Americans, including 813 registered voters, conducted last week found that 71 percent think the country is on the wrong track, compared with only 26 percent who say it’s going in the right direction.

But an earlier poll of 1,047 Americans conducted for CNN by Opinion Research Corporation from Aug. 2 to 3 drew a dramatically different response when it asked people, “How well are things going in the country today?”

A combined 55 percent said things were going “fairly well” (47 percent) or “very well” (8 percent), compared with those who said “pretty badly” (29 percent) or “very badly” (15 percent).

Keating Holland, CNN’s polling director, said the question is fundamentally different from the right track/wrong track that other pollsters ask, but he acknowledged that “it is a measurement of how well Americans think things are going in the country today.”

“Different questions get different answers,” he said.

Other pollsters are finding that no matter how negative voters are about the Republicans who control both houses of Congress, less than a majority think the Democrats would do a better job of governing. Moreover, many voters who say they will vote for a Democrat in November also say their vote is not definite.

“Only 41 percent of Americans believe that Democratic leaders in Congress ‘would move the country in the right direction,’ ” Mark Preston, CNN’s political editor, writes on the network’s Web site. That is slightly less than the 43 percent of Americans who believe that Republican leaders in Congress ‘would move the country in the right direction.’ ”

So CNN actually admits that changing a question will get different results…..wonder who let that one through. When CNN reported the results of this poll this was the headline:

Control of Congress could change in ’06, poll shows

And beared deep into an article full of doom and gloom they finally admit:

But the national mood may not be as sour as it would appear — 55 percent of people polled said things are going “very well” or “fairly well” in the United States.

They must of choked on putting it in at all.

Either way the predictions of a power change is way to premature. Many on my side of the fence have been full of doom and gloom (I wont even go to the other side, when are they not full of doom?), crying in their beer and predicting a huge defeat.

To those I say GET A GRIP!

I have been saying for quite some time that we will not lose the House nor the Senate and I stand by those predictions. While many are unhappy with Republicans, they are equally unhappy with Democrats. Don’t believe every poll that comes out.

All pollsters know how to word a question to get the desired results.

I found this nugget at FR and just had to steal it:

One poll to rule them all, and in their ignorance, bind them

So true.

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