…than to speak out and remove all doubt. This bit of wisdom, oft attributed to former President Abraham Lincoln, is something John Ziegler should take to heart. Ziegler is the producer of a new movie that totally proves that a lot of Obama supporters were misinformed, partly through the use of a Zogby poll that asks inaccurate questions. Nate Silver called out Zogby earlier today for running what amounted to a push poll; Ziegler responded by demanding an interview with Silver.
Hilarity ensues:
[Nate Silver]: Do you stand by all the statements in the survey as being unambiguously true?
[John Ziegler]: I stand one hundred percent by the notion that there is absolutely zero ambiguity as to what the right answer is to any of the questions. With the one exception of the Palin-Russia-Alaska question which we asked the way we did for a very specific purpose which was to try and gauge the Tina Fey Effect which I think we did in a very effective manner which was what was actually said by Tina Fey, everyone attributed to Sarah Plain. But for purposes of scoring Obama supporters’ answers we counted Palin as a correct response.NS: What was the right answer to that [Palin] question?
JZ: The technically accurate question [sic] is that none of the four people said that, but we counted it as correct if they said Sarah Palin.NS: Why would you commission a survey question with no correct response?
JZ: The purpose of the question, you pinhead, was we wanted to determine the Tina Fey Effect.[…]
NS: Did you have financing for the project or was it paid for out of pocket?
JZ: It is not self-financed.NS: Who paid for it?
JZ: You think I’m going to tell you that? When you’ve already shown yourself to be the enemy?NS: Was it paid for by the RNC?
JZ: [Laughs]. In your world, the question that I would ask you is what question [in the survey] is there any ambiguity as to what the answer is?NS: Well, that Obama ‘launched his career’ at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground —
JZ: That happens to be one of the questions that Obama supporters did the best on! They did better on that question than on any other Obama-related answers! And here you’re telling me that it’s not true?NS: What do you mean by “launched his career”?
JZ: The first campaign as told by the person whose position he took in the State Senate, as told by her admission, his first campaign event was in the home of Bill Ayers and his wife. [Laughs] Unless you live in the Obama kool-aid world! That is astonishing to me that you would not accept that! And by the way, when you’re given four responses to that question, what else was the response going to be? Sarah Palin?NS: Well, her husband was a member of a secessionist party.
JZ: You are such a hack! That’s a very good analogy.NS: Do you think that certain types of voters are less well informed?
JZ: I think anyone that looks rationally at these poll results would have to conclude that Obama voters are incredibly poorly informed about major issues that occurred during the campaign — my guess is because McCain voters got their information from different types of media than Obama voters did.NS: What types of media would you consider credible?
JZ: I think you need a variety of sources, but I do not accept the notion that if it’s not in the New York Times it’s not true and if it is in the New York Times it is. Just because Sean Hannity says something doesn’t mean it’s not true.
The whole thing is full of win, especially the half-dozen times that Ziegler argues that Silver won’t post the transcript of the interview. Because the transcript, I suppose, makes Silver look bad. Or something.
Oh, let’s start picking apart these questions…
Ziegler question: “Which candidate said they could see Russia from their house?”
Palin interview:
GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?
PALIN: They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.
But Ziegler thought he was measuring the “Tina Fey effect” if people responding to the poll remembered it as “can see Russia from my house” instead of “can see Russia from land here in Alaska.”
Ziegler question: “Which candidate won their first election by getting all of their opponents kicked off the ballot?”
He only counted “Obama” as a right answer to this question, even though the correct answer actually is “None.” (71% of respondents answer “None” or “Not sure.”) Obama ran against and beat his Republican opponent (Rosette Caldwell) in the 1996 race for an IL senate seat, his first election. He got the Chicago Sun-Times endorsement (see “Our endorsements for Illinois Senate,” Oct 27, 1996). His opponents in the Democratic primary — which I’d hoped we all learned, in this year’s practical civics lesson, is not the same as an election — were disqualified for irregularities in their petition signatures to get on the primary ballot.
“Which candidate said their policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket?”
This was a news story that broke on Nov. 2 — two days before the election — when many Obama supporters had already voted in early voting and no longer were paying a lot of attention to the news. In contrast, none of the questions about McCain/Palin were of news stories that broke any later than Oct. 22.
Also, the quote is inaccurate; Obama said that someone building new coal plants likely would be bankrupted by the cap-and-trade system (McCain, incidentally, also supports cap-and-trade, but this was not a poll about voters’ knowledge about the issues and politicians’ stances on them). Technically, a coal-based power company wouldn’t be bankrupted by building a new plant if they offered genuine “clean coal,” i.e. had reduced emissions at their existing plants such that new plants could be built and keep within the “cap.” However, the fact is that there is no coal that clean yet. The low-hanging fruit of reduced emissions already has been plucked for most American power plants; further reductions are going to take significant investments in new technology and construction.
It’s actually an interesting poll nonetheless, but not precisely because of what it tells us about media influence. It actually has more to do with how candidates talk about each other.
The “Weather Underground” question confused respondents because McCain and Palin didn’t specify the group to which Ayers and Dohrn belonged (and the group itself is alternately styled the “Weathermen” during its early years and “Weather Underground” after the Darwinistic townhouse explosion). If the question had been asked as “Which candidate has been associated with a domestic terrorist?” I bet the number of people answering “Obama” would have been above 75%.
Note that on a question that did precisely capture how McCain/Palin talked about Obama — “Which candidate said that the government should redistribute the wealth?” — there was an 81% correct answer rate, the same rate for the question about which candidate was unsure how many houses s/he had. The Obama campaign had played on McCain’s uncertainty in campaign rhetoric to show that he economically was out of touch, just as the McCain campaign played on Obama’s comment to show that Obama was a socialist.
The 57 states and plagiarism questions are ridiculous. The first was a verbal typo Obama made when exhausted by campaigning (in context it’s clear he meant 47), and it didn’t get picked up by the McCain campaign, so it didn’t reach a mass audience. The second is about something that happened in 1987, when an entire generation of Obama voters were either not yet born or just learning to read newspaper articles. I am too old to be Generation Obama, but even so in 1987 I wasn’t following which candidates were dropping out of the Democratic race months before Iowa.
Ziegler question: “Which candidate won their first election by getting all of their opponents kicked off the ballot?”
Technically you are correct in pointing out the distinction between primary elections and general elections. However, discuss this question in Chicago or Cook County and you’ll be laughed at for your political ignorance. In that area, winning the Democratic primary is tantamount to election. I’d have to look it up, but I’ll bet a large sum of money that no Republican has won that seat (or even one contiguous to it) at least going back to the 1930’s and possibly before.
I guess the bit that bugs me is how transparently ‘gotcha’ the questions are. I mean:
could just as accurately be phrased:
Or even:
—Myca
RonF,
Unless the respondents to the survey have your insider’s knowledge of Cook County politics, the importance of the Democratic primary within that sphere is irrelevant. The question was about Obama’s first election, and the correct answer to that question is “None.”
Indeed, your point only demonstrates how poor a question it is, because the fact that the Democratic primary effectively serves to decide who will get the seat introduces more noise in the statistic: are the people who answer “none” or “not sure” reflecting a failure of the media to report about Obama’s past (Ziegler’s assumption), or reflecting the respondents’ understanding the distinction between a primary and general election while not knowing that the Democratic primary effectively IS the election?
Incidentally, this brings up a further disparity between the questions asked about McCain/Palin, and those asked about Obama/Biden. The ones about McCain/Palin all were about things that occurred in 2008: her wardrobe, her daughter, her Russia comments, his forgetfulness about his houses. (There were no historical questions about, say, the Keating scandal or the Wasilla sports complex.)
The questions about Obama and Biden were tilted toward their backgrounds: a 1987 plagiarism, a 1995 coffee at the Ayers/Dohrn house, the 1996 13th district state Senate Democratic primary. Correct answers required respondents not only to have been keeping abreast of current events, but also to have researched the candidate’s histories. The only “current events” questions about Obama/Biden were the 57 states, coal and generated crisis questions.
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