Excerpt from: INSIDE POLITICS CNN ONLINE

Tuesday, June 28, 2005; Posted: 2:48 p.m. EDT (18:48 GMT)

Disapproval of Bush at high point

President's best marks on terrorism, worst on Social Security

(CNN) -- The number of Americans disapproving of President Bush's job performance has risen to the highest level of his presidency, according to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday.

According to the poll, 53 percent of respondents said they disapproved of Bush's performance, compared to 45 percent who approved. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points. The 53 percent figure was the highest disapproval rating recorded in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll since Bush became president in January 2001.

… but the poll also found that issues other than the Iraq war might be dragging down Bush's numbers.

The poll results were based on interviews from Friday to Sunday with 1,009 American adults.

One thousand and nine people created a spectacular headline for CNN one day in June 2005. Who are these people that control headlines? Did they get up on the wrong or the right side of the bed the morning they were interviewed? Were they annoyed when they answered the questionnaire? Where they informed? Had they just watched a biased news report?

What kinds of questions were they asked? Were those questions objective and factual? Were they written to obtain a preordained answer? How were those questions worded? Were they loaded questions? Were they multiple-choice question? Were they simply yes and no answers? If the answers did not fit the agenda of the polltaker, were they manipulated? Are the questions relevant? Are they clear and meaningful? Did the interviewee understand the issues upon which the questions were based?

Public polling has become the popular way to determine if any given person is right or wrong on any given issue––or any given soap is better than any other. Politicians mold their views around the results obtained through polling in the same way that detergent manufacturers paint pretty pictures on their soapboxes in the supermarket.

It's called marketing. And, it has become big business. Every day there is a new poll usually showing that Americans don't like what President George W. Bush is doing––no matter the actual facts. Case in point: The economy is humming along exceedingly well right now (Summer 2005) but most polls show that people do not respond on questionnaire with a positive view of Mr. Bush's handling of the economy.

The outcome of polls should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. And polls should be scrutinized carefully precisely because they do affect our lives and our freedoms.

Pollsters call it searching, testing, and measuring hypotheses and principles. They work with psychologists, sociologists, computer experts, linguists, political scientists, economists and mathematicians. They explore every nuance in language and test new methods in public opinion research.

The acknowledged tsar of polling is John Zogby. In an article posted on his website Zogby says:

Contrary to any rumors that have been widely circulated, we pollsters do not focus most or many of our national calls in New York and California . Actually, we use sampling that is "random" and "stratified" which means that every household in the US must have the same chance of being called as every other and that we take special pains to ensure that every state and region are represented equitably.

None of us who are public pollsters -- i.e. polling for major media – wittingly produce polls that are skewed toward Democrats or Republicans. While I do have some disagreements with some of my colleagues about the over sampling of Democrats (simply because they are more likely to respond to polls than Republicans) this is a sampling issue and not the result of any built in bias or prejudice.

My firm only polls "likely voters" on matters of politics and public policy because they are the ones who actually count on these matters… actual voters tend to include fewer minorities and lower income groups than all adults.

By and large, all of us do a good job of representing the mood and behavior of Americans. As with good consumers dealing with retail items and HMOs, good citizens must also be good consumers and evaluate for themselves which polls they trust.

Notice that Mr. Zogby states only that he does a good job of representing the mood and behavior of those interviewed. In other words, the pollsters reflect only the mood of the moment, not an idea or concept. Hey, how do you feel at this very second about the price of tomatoes?

How Polls Work

Poll numbers can be used to influence performance, control thought, verify predetermined theses, counter rational objections, lead segments of society to certain false conclusions or discourage voters from casting ballots—and these are just a few of the potentially malevolent goals.

Even worse, if a bias is built into the statistical sampling or a testing error is caused by systematically favoring some idea over others, the outcome can be seriously harmful and misleading. The most scientific polls are constantly searching for the truth—the facts. It is often impossible to determine which is which unless someone takes the time to research the specific circumstances of the poll.

Political polling is based on the art of statistics, an imperfect science at best. The only perfect poll of the American public would be one that interviewed everyone in the United States simultaneously over the very same issue. Since that is impossible, pollsters take random samples—a selection of participants from the population––in which each person is chosen entirely by chance. Polling less than about 1,500 people is not considered reliable for our population of 295+ million.

According to the science of statistics, a random sample of 1,500 people can only represent the views of about 10,000 people. What if only three people were sampled? Would you assume then that those three people could represent the views of 295 million people? The only reason to draw a random sample is to infer something about the specific population from which it came. Unfortunately, that is not how random sample polls are used politically––all the more reason to beware of them.

The margin of error is anywhere between three percent and five percent for any of the more carefully crafted polls. That margin rises dramatically as the group controlling the poll searches for a prescribed outcome––which is often done. It is critical to understand that polling errors occur when there are flaws in the wording of questions, in the order of the questions, in the nature of the question response options and in the timing of the poll.

Somehow it seems that for all of these conditions to be in perfect sync, it would be impossible to poll. Yet, pollsters abound and report their findings sometimes overnight, sometime collectively with an assortment of other pollsters and mostly with impunity.

It is clear there is a deep variation of opinion from differing segments of society that is often not reflected in the polls. There is also a deep variation in the way polls are conducted. Some are honest attempts to reflect opinion and some are not. Some are accurately reported in the media, some not.

According to an article published for the Public Agenda, a nonpartisan opinion research organization, public opinion researchers liken polling to making a big pot of soup. “To taste-test the soup, you don't have to eat the whole pot, or even a whole bowl's worth. You only have to try a bite,” they say. The same is true, they allege, of public opinion. “You don't have to ask every single person in America to find out what Americans think; you only need to ask a few to get the flavor of public opinion.”

In fact, there is a flaw in their soup. You cannot compare one taste of the same soup to the variety of answers of 1,500 different people because the contents of the soup remains exactly the same while the ideas of people do not. This soup analogy is not valid when talking about the great American melting pot.

Poll watcher and respected commentator Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, writes at Townhall.com “If polls were truly scientific, if the public were well informed, and if public opinion was stable, this (polling) might help advance political debate. However, none of those things are true. Moreover, it is too easy to load questions so as to get pretty much whatever answer is wanted by whoever is paying for the poll.”

It is important to understand Mr. Bartlett's pronouncements because with the proliferation of polling the cost has decreased—making it more affordable for any ragtag group to create questions to suit partisan goals.

Then again, some people polled do not honestly reflect their true opinions. In fact, in a time-diary analysis done in l994 to account for every minute of a person's life, 26 percent of Americans actually went to church weekly, although the Gallup poll for the same period reported the figure at 42 percent. So there can be a vast difference between what people do and what they say they do. Some respondents may not be willing to state their own beliefs, either because of the sensitive nature of the question or the possibility their answer may be considered socially unacceptable.

How people get their information, is, of course, at the heart of what judgments they make and what opinions they hold. With accusations of bias aimed at so many of the Liberal media is it often nearly impossible to know what is fact and what is the opinion of the reporter. Individuals often make fatal judgments about their own personal lives because they do not consider all the relevant facts. If they are not getting all the facts from the news media outlets, or those facts are slanted or biased, how can they possible answer questions for a poll?

It is important to understand bias—the practice of influencing in a particular or typically unfair direction and from prejudicial point of view by favoring certain facts or opinion over others. Often the media will twist the facts in order to favor a point of view, or they will eliminate certain facts and weight others that are more to their liking. Most reporters resist that label––some for ugly ulterior motives, others for self-serving reasons and a few because they simply do not care or even understand the subject.

In the last analysis, one should ask the question: Are political polls a rigged affair or a fair appraisal of public opinion? As in all cases of opinion, one must look at the circumstances, the goals, the motives behind the surveys—keeping in mind that most of the information from polls is filtered through the views of pollsters, journalists, self-interested parties and those who pay the bill. Given those issues, one must always be cautious of relying on polls to form or solidify opinions.

In a broader sense, it is absolutely imperative that we do not allow polls to influence our vote, regulate our minds or dictate law. That is the fundament caveat implicit in understanding the roll of polls.