If you watch the news sites of the mainstream media, you probably read the article in the last day about new poll results which show a marked upsurge in support for the Affordable Care Act (which we all know as Obamacare.) The ABC News/Washington Post poll found that voters disapprove of Obamacare by only a 2% margin. The mainstream media has been trumpeting these results as showing that the public is finally coming around to support Obamacare. Of course, the problem with the story is that it is both misleading and untrue.
First of all, the Real Clear Politics average of all the polls on the subject of Obamacare shows that the public disapproves of Obamacare by a margin of 52 to 39%. It is not close and the average has not been move towards approval.
Second, for the last five months, the one poll that has generated better results for Obamacare has been the ABC News/Washington Post poll. The poll taken by this group prior to the one now being reported came roughly two months ago. At that time, ABC News/Washington Post found that the public disapproved of Obamacare by a margin of just 1%. That means that in the last two months, disapproval has grown by 1%. Of course, that change is not statistically significant, but it ought not be ignored either.
On top of this, during the last five months there have been 59 polls on the subject of public approval of Obamacare. Of those 59, the three polls with the closest results all came from the ABC News/Washington Post consortium. Those three results were the only three from ABC/WaPo. Of the other 56 polls all but 1 had a margin of at least 9% disapproval and the average was well into double digits. If all the polls were taken in good faith to measure the public opinion on the subject, the likelihood of the three best results for Obamacare all coming from ABC/WaPo is roughly one in two hundred thousand.
Put these facts together and the only logical conclusion is that there is something about the polling done by ABC and the WaPo that produces a bias in favor of Obamacare. It cannot be that the other nine polling groups examining the subject all find double digit disapproval of Obamacare while the ABC/WaPo sample are nearly equally divided. Nor can it be that this disparity repeats itself on multiple occasions over the last five months.
This is not a difficult analysis; the bias in the ABC/WaPo poll is obvious. Nevertheless, it is not surprising that the mainstream media fail to mention this.
First of all, the Real Clear Politics average of all the polls on the subject of Obamacare shows that the public disapproves of Obamacare by a margin of 52 to 39%. It is not close and the average has not been move towards approval.
Second, for the last five months, the one poll that has generated better results for Obamacare has been the ABC News/Washington Post poll. The poll taken by this group prior to the one now being reported came roughly two months ago. At that time, ABC News/Washington Post found that the public disapproved of Obamacare by a margin of just 1%. That means that in the last two months, disapproval has grown by 1%. Of course, that change is not statistically significant, but it ought not be ignored either.
On top of this, during the last five months there have been 59 polls on the subject of public approval of Obamacare. Of those 59, the three polls with the closest results all came from the ABC News/Washington Post consortium. Those three results were the only three from ABC/WaPo. Of the other 56 polls all but 1 had a margin of at least 9% disapproval and the average was well into double digits. If all the polls were taken in good faith to measure the public opinion on the subject, the likelihood of the three best results for Obamacare all coming from ABC/WaPo is roughly one in two hundred thousand.
Put these facts together and the only logical conclusion is that there is something about the polling done by ABC and the WaPo that produces a bias in favor of Obamacare. It cannot be that the other nine polling groups examining the subject all find double digit disapproval of Obamacare while the ABC/WaPo sample are nearly equally divided. Nor can it be that this disparity repeats itself on multiple occasions over the last five months.
This is not a difficult analysis; the bias in the ABC/WaPo poll is obvious. Nevertheless, it is not surprising that the mainstream media fail to mention this.
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