Silly Pollsters

[rowyn]

I really want to find the actual poll cited in this article but I haven't. Because this looks like the silliest poll question I've seen outside of an internet meme in quite a while:

From various sources (such as this one) "70 percent of those who sympathize with the tea-party movement ... want a federal government that fosters job creation."

Was that really the question? "Do you want a federal government that fosters job creation?" Really? What were the other 30% thinking, do you suppose? "No, I want a federal government that crushes the economy and destroys jobs, that way the revolution will come sooner"? I mean, seriously. What was the pollster who wrote this thinking? I wonder what the other questions were like. "Do you want access to quality health care?" "Are you in favor of clean air?" "Do you oppose murder?" :D

(hat tip to James Taranto of Best of the Web for calling attention to the poll.)

Edit:

Ah, the original poll is here, and the question appears to have been "Please tell me if this is something with which you strongly agree, mostly agree, mostly disagree, or strongly disagree: 'The government needs to do a lot more to create jobs'". Which doesn't sound quite as silly as "Should the government foster job creation?" But it still doesn't really tell me whether the people who agreed thought that the government should do more to create jobs by, say, spending $500 billion on infrastructure, or by eliminating corporate income taxes, or by firing themselves so their salaries can be redistributed back to taxpayers, or whatever. Moreover, it still seems badly worded to me -- strong disagreement might mean "No, I think the government is doing just the right amount" or it might mean "I don't want the government to do anything with regards to jobs, ever, including the stuff I think they're doing wrong right now."

Comments

[level-head.livejournal.com]

The pollsters don't seem to have this poll on published on their site, but they have a section called "wacky surveys" in which a sneering, condescending attitude shines through:

http://www.selzerco.com/wacky.html

"Fostering" jobs would mean, to many people, simply getting out of the way.

===|==============/ Level Head

[rowyn]

I did find the original poll (Taranto had a link to it, actually) and edited the post to reflect it.

http://media.bloomberg.com/bb/avfile/ruaKeIMmBiV4

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, no one asked on that poll if the respondent "sympathized with the Tea Party movement." They asked about the much smaller group of people who actively support the movement.

I was intrigued that all but one of the options for decreasing the deficit involved raising taxes -- which traditionally increases the deficit.

Apparently, large reductions of federal spending wasn't even something within the imagination of the people constructing the survey questions.

As you suggested, most would (and did) agree with "The government needs to do a lot more to create jobs" -- because cutting taxes and spending is the one thing the government could do to accomplish this.

===|==============/ Level Head

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

It sounds like it was included in a list of things the government did, so the clear alternative to all of them would be 'do nothing'.

The tea party movement is (yet another) thinly disguised repulican phony anti-government warglbargl generator, so I don't know why you'd expect anything relating to them to have any logic behind it.

[rowyn]

So, if, say, I think that the government should lower taxes to improve the economy, and you ask me, "Do you think the government should do anything to improve the economy?" I'm supposed to say "No"? And if I say yes, then I must really mean that I want more government infrastructure programs? O_o

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

'Do anything' is a pretty broad statement.

But 'Do you think the government should foster job creation' doesn't sound like lowering taxes to me -- so you'd say 'no'.

[rowyn]

The actual question was this:

"Please tell me if this is something with which you strongly agree, mostly agree, mostly disagree, or strongly disagree: 'The government needs to do a lot more to create jobs'".

If "No" is what say when, for example, I wish the government would lower taxes and remove layers of bureaucracy from the process of starting a new business, then what do I say if I think the government is doing exactly the right things right now and don't think they should do anything differently?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Well, regardless of what you say in the first case, 'no' is what you say in the second case.

If you want the government intimately involved in fine-tuning the economy by trying to shift taxes away from and give regulatroy exceptions for people starting new businesses, then you might say yes, and think of yourself as being a small-government activist who wants to reign in spending.

I think you're really not in that case, since you're making things even more complicated and increasing the deficit, but whatever.

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

Whenever I see poll results or any kind of percentage projections I always think of that saying: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."

[rowyn]

I admit, polls which purport to prove stuff like "90% of Americans think Washington, DC is a province of Canada" tend to make me despair more for the state of polling than the state of the citizenry. >:)