@Cycloptichorn,
As with any poll, I would like to see the actual poll questions. And just the inclusion of the letters "NBC" in the poll source, it does not gender much confidence as far as I am concerned.
@okie,
And the letters WSJ don't help? MSNBC reported the results but you can go to NBC/WSJ to get more discussion of the poll, including the identity of the pollsters and the wording of the questions asked.
Please spend some time delving into that and report back on any issues that still cause you concern.
@realjohnboy,
WNJ perhaps helps a little, but just now after searching around on the links and story for 15 minutes, I did not find any information regarding actual questions asked, how the poll was conducted, and what the poll sample consisted of. It really does not matter to me that much anyway. It is what happens in the coming months and years that matter. Maybe somebody that actually cares what the poll shows can dig up more information? Frankly, I am not that interested.
I did find this in the article cited, which indicates that over half the polled think the country is on the wrong track and that the war in Afghanistan is not improving.
"What’s more, 56 percent think the country is on the wrong track, although that’s a seven-point drop from last month.
And a combined 82 percent say the war in Afghanistan has either gotten worse or stayed the same, with another 71 percent believing the U.S. will ultimately have to withdraw and leave the country without a stable democratic government."
@Cycloptichorn,
Quote:De-funding is problematic, b/c the executive branch can shift funds around to cover the vast majority of the things that the House Republicans can even effect. So the whole thing seems like a waste of time, and like you said, people just are tired of the issue and want to move on.
I suppose the GOP could prevent the President from moving money around if they earmarked every single dollar in each bill they pass. Wouldn't that be some lovely legislation from the people that say they won't do any earmarks?
@okie,
Quote:. It is what happens in the coming months and years that matter. Maybe somebody that actually cares what the poll shows can dig up more information? Frankly, I am not that interested.
We know you aren't interest in the truth okie. Why should this time be any different? It's such hard work having to find out facts. So much easier if you just let Rush, Glenn or Sarah think for you, isn't it?
@okie,
okie wrote:
And a combined 82 percent say the war in Afghanistan has either gotten worse or stayed the same, with another 71 percent believing the U.S. will ultimately have to withdraw and leave the country without a stable democratic government."
Combined 82% and 71% of what?
Do you think, Okie, that that result from the NBC/WSJ poll is an accurate assessment of the mood of the public?
Thanks.
@realjohnboy,
realjohnboy wrote:okie wrote:And a combined 82 percent say the war in Afghanistan has either gotten worse or stayed the same, with another 71 percent believing the U.S. will ultimately have to withdraw and leave the country without a stable democratic government."
Combined 82% and 71% of what?
Do you think, Okie, that that result from the NBC/WSJ poll is an accurate assessment of the mood of the public?
Thanks.
I don't know, rjb. That was a quote from the poll that cyclops was using. I prefer Rasmussen, which is based upon consistent and proven methods of gathering their poll information, using automated telephone procedures.
@realjohnboy,
Polls are an accurate assessment of the attitudes of the people polled, nothing more.
Thereis no way that a very small sampling of people can represent the mood and opinions of the entire country, it isn't possible.
@mysteryman,
True, mm, but some pollsters have proven their skill by accurately predicting elections. Rasmussen does his poll of likely voters, which is different than polling everyone or a cross section of public opinion. I still like the idea of measuring the mood of likely voters, because likely voters are more prone to be informed on issues and they are as their label denotes, more likely to participate in political issues, which might include not only voting, but writing or calling their congressmen, etc. They may also be more likely to work for campaigns and donate money to campaigns. They are more likely to be engaged in the political workings of America than other citizens.
@okie,
okie, Is that what you do with all of the Ras polls?
@MontereyJack,
MJ, It's useless trying to explain the niceties of economics to ican. All he knows how to do is cut and paste numbers without understanding the underlying story behind them. He thinks today's unemployment numbers can be blamed all on Obama. He still hasn't figured out how Bush's Great Recession impacted the world's economies and unemployment.
@MontereyJack,
That has to be a sign made by a leftie. It's grammatically correct.
@plainoldme,
Apparently, the right has modified the sign MJ posted. It also appears photoshopped with Obama made to look like Hitler and decorated with symbols: the Communist hammer and sickle, the Muslim moon and star, the swastika and the peace sign.
@okie,
okie wrote:
True, mm, but some pollsters have proven their skill by accurately predicting elections.
Ras is no more accurate than many other posters. We've been over this before.
Quote: Rasmussen does his poll of likely voters, which is different than polling everyone or a cross section of public opinion. I still like the idea of measuring the mood of likely voters, because likely voters are more prone to be informed on issues and they are as their label denotes, more likely to participate in political issues, which might include not only voting, but writing or calling their congressmen, etc. They may also be more likely to work for campaigns and donate money to campaigns. They are more likely to be engaged in the political workings of America than other citizens.
Don't you realize that what constitutes the 'likely voter' screen is subject to manipulation? Those formulas are usually kept secret by the polling houses. If you see a result you don't like, as a pollster, what's to keep you from 'adjusting' the Likely Voter screen to include more of the responses you want?
Cycloptichorn
@Cycloptichorn,
We all know you don't like Rasmussen because you have figured out he is not a fellow traveler of yours, but you still cannot take away his reasonably good track record with predicting election results, cyclops.
It's been a couple years since I looked into it, okie, but as I remember, Rasmussen has been patting itself on the back because it did better in ONE election, not all of them.
As a matter of fact, Pew just looked at the actual numbers from the 2010 elections, the spread between Republican and Democratic voters. The ACTUAL spread from actual election results was about 7%. Most pollster hadit about 6%. Rasmussen, on the other hand, was at the bottom with about a 12% spread (in favor of Republicans, naturally), almost twice the actual spread. Seems the people who say Ras has a Republican bias are right.
If you look at the math, for a nation of 350,000,000, a poll with about 1000 randomly selected participants will be statistically significant with a margin of error of +/- 2-3%, which is why all the pollsters use a sample size of about a thousand for their full polls (if they use significantly smaller sample sizes, you will note they will say the margin of error is a good deal larger). Since about a quarter of the American population now has no landline, you will notice that now most of the major pollsters take a large fraction of their respondents from cellphones. Not Rasmussen. Since landline users skew toward the older demographics and toward the Republican end of the spectrum, whereas cellphone users tend toward the younger (almost half of under-30s have no landline) and Democratic, Rasmussen's automated landline-only system is no longer random, hence its statistical significance is getting more and more questionable.
Further, "likely voter" is another question entirely. The opinion of the country is not formed only by people who self-proclaim (and self-proclamations are notoriously unreliable) that they will vote in the next election, but what EVERYBODY thinks.
