Centerfield

"Most" Confusing

Poll: Most doubt Bush has plan for Iraq victory

Let's go to the 7th and 8th paragraphs of this story:

Among poll respondents, 55 percent said they did not believe Bush has a plan that will achieve victory for the United States in Iraq; 41 percent thought he did.

The sampling error in the telephone survey was plus or minus 5 percentage points.

OK. Hypothetical time. You ask 20 people whether they prefer brand A or brand B. 11 choose A, 8 choose B, and 1 is undecided. Would you say "most" people prefer brand A? Maybe not a big deal, but many people skim headlines to see what's going on. Why not make a practice of giving the numbers either in the headline, subhead, or lead?

Now, let's look at paragraph 6.

The poll conducted Wednesday does not directly reflect how Americans are reacting to Bush's speech, because only 10 percent of the 606 adult Americans polled had seen it live and two-thirds had not even heard or read news coverage about it.

What do you suppose the 10% who had actually heard the speech thought? This is a huge pet peeve of mine, that opinion polls almost never try to measure, even by self-report, whetherthe respondents are actually informed enough to have a legitimate opinion, or whether views vary based on how closely they have followed a given issue.

Here's the thing: we already knew prior to the speech that a majority of opinion was forming that was dissatisfied by the admin's Iraq policy. The question is what it means...and where we are headed. Wouldn't it be much more interesting and useful to find out what percent of people are taking the efffort to figure out what's going on, and to find out whether opinions diverge based on the extent to which people take such efforts? Is anyone really surpised that people express such opinions when his critics have consistently complained about the lack of a plan, and the president has not been regularly and consistently out front in fighting for support? I know I'm not.