Monday, September 19, 2011

Setting The Record Straight

Over at PoliticsUSA, Jason Easley notes the Obama administration is calling out the Village media on recent polls showing the GOP far worse off than the President.  David Axelrod is taking the lead:

 According to a CNN poll released on Wednesday, a plurality of Americans approve of the President’s jobs plan. Two thirds believe we should cut taxes for the middle class and rebuild America’s roads and bridges. Three quarters believe we need to put our teachers and first responders back to work. More Americans trust the President to handle the economy than Congressional Republicans by a margin of 9 points.

Despite what you hear in elite commentary, the President’s support among base voters and in key demographic groups has stayed strong. According to the latest NBC-WSJ poll, Democrats approve of his performance by an 81%-14% margin. That’s stronger than President Clinton’s support among Democrats at this point in his term and, according to Gallup, stronger than any Democratic President dating back to Harry Truman through this point in their presidency. 92 percent of African Americans approve. And a PPP poll out this week showed the President winning 67 percent of Hispanics against Romney and 70 percent against Perry, a higher percentage than he captured against Senator McCain in 2008.

And this is what I was talking about yesterday:  The President has low numbers, but the GOP has much, much worse metrics.  Easley continues:

The latest example of conservative bias in poll interpretation comes from a Bloomberg story that uses Hillary Clinton’s popularity to make the point that voters are feeling buyer’s remorse about electing Obama. The premise is that since Hillary Clinton is more popular, voters regret electing Obama.

The problem is that Bloomberg’s own polling data contradicts their story. While it is true that more people think the country would be better off under Hillary Clinton than when the question was asked a year ago, only 34% felt this way compared to 47% who thought the nation would be the same. This supposed buyer’s remorse was actually only a 9 point swing from results when the same question was asked in 2010.

A deeper look into the data found that tea party supporters (44%) were the group who most thought that America would be better off under Clinton. Fifty seven percent of Democrats thought the country would be the same. Tea Party supporters who probably didn’t vote for Obama think that the country would be better off under Clinton, and the majority of Democrats think that the country would be in the same shape under Clinton or Obama.

In other words, the media's selling a narrative that Obama is doomed in order to give them a better race to cover heading into 2012.   The problem is of course who the media is owned by, and that the Republican Party represent their corporate interests far more.  It's not a vacuum here, folks.

But it does suck.  We need a better media.

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