Rethinking Public Opinion - the immense importance of public opinion polling in American politics, and the under-reported problems at the heart of the enterprise, combine to call for a serious critique of the polling industry, its assumptions, and its method
posted by Gyan
on Nov 8, 2008 -
40 comments
Maybe America needs Barack more than Barack needs America... It's got to be tough being Barack Obama these days. Just managing to hang onto a slim lead in the polls against a truly horrifying Republican ticket - after eight years in which a Republican administration has all but destroyed the nation. Having to explain to people over and over again that no, he's really not a Muslim, and people still don't believe him. Sarah Palin. Maybe America isn't worth Barack's trouble. Maybe there's other fish in the sea, America. Maybe you ought to think about that a little and stop being this way. Canada has an election coming up too, and given
what they've got to work with, more and more Canadians are starting to
take a hard look south of the border.
posted by Naberius
on Sep 23, 2008 -
78 comments
According to a recent international survey, there remains no global consensus regarding who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. "On average, 46 percent of those surveyed said al Qaeda was responsible, 15 percent said the U.S. government, 7 percent said Israel and 7 percent said some other perpetrator... The U.S. government was to blame, according to 23 percent of Germans and 15 percent of Italians." The poll was collected by
World Public Opinion, a neat website filled with various polls about interesting topics.
posted by Baby_Balrog
on Sep 11, 2008 -
131 comments
Who are Muslims? Gallup has conducted a poll "in 40 predominantly Muslim nations and among significant Muslim populations in the West. It is the first set of unified and scientifically representative views from 1.3 billion Muslims globally." They'll be parsing and interpreting this data for years, but for the time being, they've offered some of their key results
online and
in print. See also, the
Muslim-West Facts Initiative. (
via)
[more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea
on Jul 28, 2008 -
37 comments
Ask 500 (or 100) people: Random participants answer each other's polls on
prayer in school,
the bible,
philosophers,
iraq,
social habits,
love &
marriage,
materialism,
freedom of speech, or whatever topic of interest someone wants to open up for a very momentary spotlight, and reasonably
accurate data.
[more inside]
posted by mdn
on Nov 25, 2007 -
29 comments
As in the 2004 elections, several useful sites have sprung up to keep track of the 2006 midterms for House, Senate and state gubernatorial races. Some have a political point of view, others don't, but they don't differ significantly on the outcome at this point. One of the veterans in this game is
ElectionProjection.com, which was
pretty close to actual results in '04. (A creation of
"the Blogging Caesar"). From the right, there's
MyElectionAnalysis.com, while
ElectionPredictions seems to come from a neutral corner. All of these track statewide polls as they are published; they may differ in how they weight results. For a more subjective approach, see
Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball or the
Cook Political Report. Overall, the consensus seems to be that the GOP will hold both houses, but with slimmer margins, and lose on the gubernatorial front.
posted by beagle
on Jul 10, 2006 -
30 comments
Mexico's election: now being recounted, but
some are saying it was stolen with our help. Many countries in Latin and South America have been moving to the left lately,
following in the footsteps of Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Chile. Argentina actually caught us messing with things during their election, too. Exit polls in Mexico (as in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004) showed a lead for the more leftist (relatively) candidate, and for those who scoff at using exit polls as evidence--in 2004,
US Republican Senator Richard Lugar, in Kiev, cited the divergence of exit polls and official polls as solid evidence of “blatant fraud” in the vote count in Ukraine. As a result, the Bush Administration refused to recognize the Ukraine government’s official vote tally. So, honest election, or what?
posted by amberglow
on Jul 3, 2006 -
65 comments
US Troop poll results in: 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and nearly one in four say the troops should leave immediately. In other news,
58% of Americans think the troops should stay. Back to the troops:
85% said the U.S. mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,” 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.”
posted by caddis
on Feb 28, 2006 -
74 comments
A new poll finds that the American public would significantly alter the Bush administration’s recently proposed federal budget. Presented a breakdown of the major areas of the proposed discretionary budget and given the opportunity to redistribute it, respondents made major changes. The most dramatic changes were deep cuts in defense spending, a significant reallocation toward deficit reduction, and increases in spending on education, job training, reducing reliance on oil, and veterans. These changes were favored by both Republicans and Democrats, though the changes were generally greater for Democrats.
What America Gets Right (
pdf) via
The Gadflyer
posted by y2karl
on Mar 8, 2005 -
49 comments
Former Bush ghostwriter confirms Bush had plans for Iraq in 1999. Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father’s shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. “Suddenly, he’s at 91 percent in the polls, and he’d barely crawled out of the bunker.”
posted by RavinDave
on Oct 28, 2004 -
37 comments
Voice of a Superpower --Foreign Policy magazine puts together an interview with John & Jane Q. Public on us, the world, terror, and stuff--based on our responses to public-opinion polls from a wide variety of sources.
posted by amberglow
on Jun 7, 2004 -
5 comments
How the Poll Results on Iraq Were Manipulated by James Zogby, Special to Arab News -
...In fact, Zogby International in Iraq had conducted the poll, and the American Enterprise Institute did publish their interpretation of the findings. But the AEI’s "spin" and the vice president’s use of their "spin" created a faulty impression of the poll’s results and, therefore, of the attitudes of the Iraqi people. Consider some of the other poll findings: Over 55 percent give a negative rating to "how the US military is dealing with Iraqi civilians." Only 20 percent gave the US military a positive rating... When asked whom they preferred to "provide security and restore order in their country," only 6.5 percent said the US...
posted by y2karl
on Oct 23, 2003 -
16 comments
A monster of a poll (by America's monster pollster PEW) asking 38.000 people (!) in 44 countries what they think of America. VERY interesting!
posted by acrobat
on Dec 9, 2002 -
41 comments
Conservatives rare species on campus "A poll by the Enterprise Institute showed that professors registered as Democrats outnumbered Republicans at Stanford, 151 to 17. At Berkeley, the lopsided score was 59-7. At Cornell, 166-6. And so on." When I was in college, I guess I was too busy trying to earn my degree to notice if conservatives were allowed to exist or not. I don't remember much political indoctrination in my physics or differential equations classes. Are the campuses really like what this columnist suggests?
posted by munger
on Oct 21, 2002 -
148 comments
Canadians fuzzy on concept of left and right. A new poll suggests that three quarters of Canadians have trouble telling political left from right. Sort of makes me wonder why voter turnout is higher in Canada than the U.S.. Canadians are also hard to pin down politically, as polls suggests they generally want less taxes
and more government spending.
posted by bobo123
on Apr 30, 2002 -
17 comments
Polls Come Under Fire.
Watchdog Group Issues Rebuke on Poll on Islamic Countries. Meanwhile, those bogus aggregates continue to circulate freely in this country and around the world.
posted by semmi
on Mar 22, 2002 -
16 comments
