| Number 260 | June 25, 2004 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, I surprised myself this week by how much time I spent looking at poll results. It all started when I was making dinner... I’ve mentioned before in these pages that my inordinate interest in opinion polls was most likely born in my days as a door-to-door survey conductor for the Gallup organization. Yes, many years ago I had a brief and inglorious career as a Gallup pollster, knocking on people’s doors in the distant suburbs of Minneapolis, asking if they “approved or disapproved” of the way the president was handling his job. Soliciting political opinions was a small part the job; the bulk of the 45-minute Gallup interview had to do with market research. (My favorite question was “When you see Clydesdale horses, what brand of beer do you think of?”) It was an unpleasant job, but the experience did teach me something. Polls, like many tests in our schooling system, offer a list of “choices” to the respondent. Sometimes two choices, sometimes more, but ultimately one must choose from the list. For many people – as I saw in my time as a pollster – there is a great reluctance to simplify one’s answer to any complex question. The most common complex question, for example, is probably the one about “approving” or “disapproving” of the president. Most people approve of some things, and disapprove of other things, and they did not like that I had to get them to give one answer or the other. But, in the end, most of them succumbed, and did give one answer or the other. Most of them probably graduated from high school, as well. So I have some opinions about the validity of polls, just as I have opinions about the value of my high school diploma. Nonetheless, polls are fun, and they do tell us some things – not always what they think they’re telling us – as I hope you’ll see in this issue. If you choose to write to me about this issue – and I appreciate that so many of you do write to me each week! – please be sure to tell me if you A. Approve, B. Disapprove, or C. Have No Opinion Whatsoever, of this issue. Your responses will be kept confidential. That’s all for now. Have a good week, Nygaard |
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Here’s the lead paragraph from the lead story in the Wall Street Journal of June 21:
Orwellian? You betcha! I do hope to revisit this “profits of the nonprofits” issue before too long. |
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On June 3rd an important news release was issued by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. The release told of a poll that was conducted from November 2003 through February 2004 in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, Uruguay, and the United States. The international polling firm Globescan talked to 18,797 people in these countries. The press release was unambiguous, with the headline “World Public Opinion Says World Not Going in Right Direction.” Here’s the lead sentence: “A majority of people in the world do not feel the world is going in the right direction, a view strongly linked to the view—held by a majority—that the United States is not having a positive influence in the world.” This overwhelming rejection of the Bush-led “New World Order” (the preferred phrase of the father, Bush I) by no less than 67 percent of the world is probably not surprising to readers of Nygaard Notes, or readers of the non-corporate press in general. But it most likely would be a surprise – maybe a big one – to readers of the Mainstream Corporate For-Profit Agenda-Setting Bound Media. Too bad not a single U.S. newspaper reported on it, despite the results being publicly released and readily available to the press. Such wide disapproval of the workings of the New American Empire may be expected by the average media “consumer” when looking at less-wealthy countries like Mexico, Turkey, or Brazil. But the poll showed that the highest percentages of folks with negative attitudes about the direction of “the world” are found in wealthy European countries like France (78%), Germany (78%), and Italy (79%). It may also surprise US’ers to see that, worldwide, “Those with higher levels of education were more negative than those with low levels, as were those with very high levels of income as compared to those with very low levels.” The reasons for this are no doubt rather complex, but it seems to me that the U.S. media have a responsibility to let the public know what the world thinks of our policies. We vote for the people who make these policies, after all, and knowledge of how the people of the world feel about these things would arguably have an effect the average United Statesian’s understanding of our leadership. While I’m at it, here’s a little more about this unreported poll: When asked if they agreed that “The United States is having a mainly positive influence in the world,” the greatest disagreement came, once again, from Germany (82%) and France (74%), but on this issue they are joined by citizens of Russia (72%). Overall, 55 percent of respondents worldwide disagree with the nature of U.S. “influence in the world,” half of them “strongly.” There are a bunch of other interesting things in this poll, including a 55 percent positive view – vs 25 percent negative – of “globalization,” with the most positive views held by people in Brazil, India, and South Africa. Surprised? You can look at the survey for yourself by going to the website of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at http://www.pipa.org/ and looking for “19 Nation Globescan Poll on Global Issues.” |
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Working on the international poll article for this week got me thinking about polls in general. We always see and hear about poll results in the media, and during an election year we’ll hear about them more than usual. So I went poking around some recent national poll results, and here are a few thoughts about what I found. What is Not Asked An astute observer can often tell a lot about the state of the nation by looking not only at which questions are asked by the prominent polling organizations, but which are not. For example, “The Polling Report, Inc.” publishes a regular summary of all of the major opinion polls on a variety of subjects. The reports include the exact wording of the questions, and other data. In their current section on “Iraq” there are a number of questions along the lines of “All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?” (That’s from an ABC News/Washington Post Poll of last week.) I can’t help but imagine a similar survey of the German public in 1939, asking if the invasion of Poland was “worth conducting” despite the “costs to Germany.” It seems to me that the first question about which anyone should have an “opinion” in regard to war – any war – is the question of morality. That is, is a war morally justified? CAN a war be morally justified? Where does war fit into any ethical framework? Is a war justifiable in terms of the applicable legal framework, either domestic or, more importantly, international? Following this line of thought, I searched the “Iraq” section of U.S. opinion polls over the past month, looking for the word “ethics,” or the word “moral,” or even the word “law.” As in, “Do you think the U.S. had the moral right to invade Iraq?” or “Does it concern you that the U.S. invasion of Iraq may have been a violation of international law?” No references to such abstractions were found. Following are a few Iraq-related poll results that I did find.
Hmmm... Off On the Wrong Track I report elsewhere in this issue that a majority of people from all over the planet think the world is going in the “wrong direction,” led by the USA. A similar question is often asked in U.S. polls, as well; so often, in fact, that it is known as the “Right Track/Wrong Track indicator.” The wording varies from poll to poll, but it’s always something like this Associated Press version: “Generally speaking, would you say things in this country are heading in the right direction, or are they off on the wrong track?” The London Financial Times of June 10 commented that “The right-track, wrong-track indicator is considered a key barometer of the electorate's mood and is closely monitored by political analysts.” That may be, but no newspaper in the U.S., except the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio, has bothered to comment on it in the past month or so. Given that we are less than five months away from the presidential election, and given the remarkably consistent pattern in the polls, this lack of reporting is worth pondering. What is this remarkably consistent pattern, you ask? Here’s a brief summary:
I don’t put too much stock in polls, but when we see so many polls come up with such similar results, I think it’s worth knowing about. |
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As I was preparing dinner on June 4th I was listening to Minnesota Public Radio, where I heard the following “News Brief” at the top of the hour:
(I’m paraphrasing, since I didn’t write down the exact wording. I was chopping onions!) Listening to this, I couldn’t help wondering: What in the world do these “Minnesotans” think it is, this thing that they call “health insurance?” If “more than half” of us are concerned about paying our medical bills, then how can “most” of us say this is “adequate?” (The number who say so, by the way, is 78 percent.) The story didn’t attempt to explain and, typically, when I went and looked at the original survey, they didn’t ask respondents about the apparent contradiction. |
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Here are a few interesting and/or amusing things I picked up while slogging through endless poll results this week. Gallup Poll November 2003: “Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields: very high, high, average, low, or very low?” The highest-rated: Nurses, medical doctors, and veterinarians. The lowest-rated: Car salesmen, HMO managers, and insurance salesmen. (Yes, the poll said “men.”) There is a section in the Polling Report called “Federal Budget and Taxes” that is revealing. One question asks: “If you had to choose, would you prefer balancing the budget or spending more on education, health care and economic development?” That’s an interesting question. (62 percent said they would spend more.) Since the largest single use of taxpayer dollars in the federal budget goes for military spending, I wondered if they asked if people would “prefer balancing the budget or spending more on the military.” When I looked, there was no reference in the section to “military” or “defense.” ABC News/Washington Post Poll, last October: “Which of these do you think is more important: providing health care coverage for all Americans, even if it means raising taxes, OR, holding down taxes, even if it means some Americans do not have health care coverage?” Coverage for all, 79%; Hold down taxes, 17%. Same poll: “Which would you prefer: the current health insurance system in the United States, in which most people get their health insurance from private employers, but some people have no insurance, OR, a universal health insurance program, in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that's run by the government and financed by taxpayers?” Current system, 33%; Universal program, 62%. Oh, there’s so much more, so much more! But that’s all for this week... |