War hawks cite poll that says most Americans favor military strike against North Korea

April 6th, 2009 at 09:15am Pat Cunningham

 

 For weeks now, I’ve been compiling notes to make a case here that polls conducted by Rasmussen Reports generally are not to be trusted.

 The latest piece of evidence in this regard emerged Sunday in the form of a Rasmussen poll purporting to SHOW that 57 percent of American voters favor a U.S. “military response to eliminate North Korea’s missile launching capability.”

 The survey’s findings, if you can call them that, are highly dubious in several respects.

 First of all, the poll was conducted before North Korea unsuccessfully tested a long-range missile on Sunday and before the ensuing international fuss over the test.

   I’m sorry, but it strikes me as unlikely that most Americans had become so bellicose even before the matter had made headlines on a Sunday morning.

 But that’s not the most suspicious aspect of the survey. Far worse is this report from Rasmussen: “Overall, 75 percent of voters say they’ve been closely following news stories about the possible launch. That figure includes 40 percent who’ve followed the news very closely.”

 Yeah, sure. In a country where most people can’t name both of their U.S. senators, three-fourths of them have been closely following stories about a possible missile test by North Korea? And four in ten have been following those stories very closely? Please.

 Americans are pre-occupied these days by the nation’s economic troubles. Our government currently is winding down its unpopular war in Iraq while it’s also sending more troops to Afghanistan. And we’re supposed to believe that most of us are in such a hawkish mood that we want a military response to an unsuccessful missile test by North Korea? Come on.

 But, of course, this Rasmussen poll has delighted certain right-wing elements who are always itching for an American military adventure. (See HERE and HERE and HERE.)

 The problem with this poll, beyond the preposterousness of its results, is hard to pinpoint. Maybe it’s a matter of methodology. Rasmussen uses automated telephone surveys — robocalls, as they’re known — rather than live phone interviews. Or maybe it’s the questions asked, or the modeling of the survey sample.

 Critics generally are mixed in their assessment of Rasmussen. Some give the firm high marks for accuracy, some don’t. And some say there’s a not-so-subtle conservative bent to Rasmussen’s approach. Matt Yglesias of The Atlantic put it this way a few months ago:

Rasmussen is a pretty good pollster whose results are within the range of accuracy one wants from a pollster. But polling is a crowded business. And Rasmussen doesn’t also have a daily newspaper or a television network to tout his results. His business, however, requires attention. So how does he get that attention? Well, in part he gets it with issue polling that, while basically methodologically sound, has question-wording that’s designed to lead to conservative-friendly results.

Then the results come out and conservatives tout the results as vindicating their position. It’s free PR for Rasmussen, it’s a morale booster and message-driver for the right.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo also finds a whiff of bias in Rasmussen polls:

On the question of the quality of Rasmussen polls in general, I’ve been watching them closely now through at least two cycles. The toplines tend to be a bit toward the Republican side of the spectrum, compared to the average of other polls.

Personally, I’m not so charitable about Rasmussen’s methodology – for several reasons.

 Exhibit No. 1 is the methodology used in Rasmussen’s latest polls on President Obama’s approval ratings. The firm’s sample is comprised of “likely voters,” meaning  the respondents are selected by a process in which Rasmussen endeavors to determine the likelihood that they’ll be voting in the next election. The model is based on the person’s record of having voted in the past and on certain other factors.  It’s an iffy proposition at best, especially in tumultuous times like these.

 But what sense is there in limiting a poll on a president’s approval rating to so-called likely voters when the next presidential election is almost four years away? Some of the folks who will vote in the next presidential election are still in high school. The whole concept is ridiculous.

 And the result is that Rasmussen’s measure of Obama’s approval rating is at variance with the numbers produced by all of the other major polling organizations — especially with respect to the president’s disapproval numbers.

 Consider this: The most recent Fox News poll on the matter has Obama’s disapproval rating at 32 percent. Gallup and Newsweek both have it at 27 percent. ABC News has it at 29 percent. But Rasmussen puts it at a relatively whopping 43 percent! Something in all of that simply doesn’t compute.

 Another example of a Rasmussen poll not making sense arose last month when the firm came out with a SURVEY suggesting that 53 percent of Americans think it’s at least somewhat likely that the United States will enter a 1930s-like economic depression.

 The problem was that the same poll showed a plurality expecting the economy to improve within a year and a solid majority expecting it to improve within five years. How, then, could a majority thinks it likely that we’ll see a ’30s-like depression? That doesn’t add up, especially when you consider that the depression of the ’30s lasted a decade.

 Looking at that same poll from a negative angle, you get this:  Only 37 percent of respondents, barely one-third, expect the economy to be weaker next year, and only 17 percent expect it to be weaker five years from now. But a majority expect a full-blown depression??

 Perhaps the greatest example of Rasmussen skewing a poll by asking a loaded question came up last month amid the controversy over radio blabber Rush Limbaugh’s influence on the Republican Party.

 Rasmussen asked respondents whether they agreed with this statement: “Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party — he says jump and they say how high.”

 Not surprisingly, only 11 percent of Republican respondents agreed with that leading statement. And predictably, the right-wing blogosphere trumpeted the results as proof that GOPers are not subservient to a talk-show host.

 That episode was enough to make me suspicious of Rasmussen polls in general.

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