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Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Overly fair in poll results
I'm confused by this lede about the latest Bush poll numbers:
A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds 37% of Americans approving of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 59% disapproving. Despite many extraordinary events dominating the news over the past weeks -- including the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Bush's high-visibility trip to Europe -- this slight drop from the 40% approval rating measured earlier in the month is not statistically significant and falls within the margin of error between the two surveys. The current 37% rating is similar to his average approval rating of 37% for all of June.
Granted, there were many extraordinary events in the last few weeks. Gallup identifies some of them. We also have North Korea testing missiles, Iran's defiance, and the first veto of the Bush presidency. On a far larger scale, the September 11 attacks were extraordinary events; Bush's poll numbers went up. Also on a larger scale, Hurricane Katrina was an extraordinary event; Bush's poll numbers went down.
So I'm not sure what the writer at Gallup expected. Extraordinary events occurred, so Bush's poll numbers should have changed? Is that the expectation? If so, which direction should the numbers head?
One way to read this is that the expansion of war in the Middle East is bad and that Bush's expletive-filled, chancellor-groping European excursion (NOTE: AFAIK, Bush only used 1 expletive and groped but one chancellor; I'm exaggerating for comedic effect, not stating literal facts.) was bad. Given these bad events, the writer naturally expected Bush's poll numbers to go down. The poll numbers did go down, but apparently not enough to satisfy Joseph Carroll, author of the piece.
