Polling Numbers Explain A Lot While Saying Nothing

When Conservatives declare that the various opinion polls, for the most part, cannot be trusted, those political personalities that oppose conservative ideas respond by saying that the Right is accusing the media of fudging the numbers. That may or may not be the case. When opinion polls are designed, the questions are often carefully worded to elicit certain responses. Sometimes the cross-section of respondents are not sufficiently informed about the issues or subjects that they are being asked.

In a video by John Ziegler, a group of informed Obama voters were asked a series of questions last November, one of which was which party was in control of the United States Congress. In 2006 the Democrats gained control of Congress, but as a result of the hate for the Bush Administration that has been perpetuated by the media, these voters assumed that the Congress was being controlled by Republicans. This helped me to understand the low approval ratings for Congress during that time period. The approval ratings in opinion polls were not low because America was necessarily angry at Pelosi and gang, as they should have been, but because they were convinced that the Republicans were in control of Congress, and since the Bush Derangement Syndrome was in full swing, anybody with an "R" after their name were the enemy to folks that had fallen pray to the demonization of the Right by the media.

On the Congress Job Rating page at Polling Report dot com, before the inauguration of Barack Obama, the approval numbers were consistently in the teens and low twenties. After January 20, suddenly the numbers jump, for the most part, into the thirties and low forties.

I believe this is telling when it comes to opinion polls. Same Congress, same gang of idiots, yet suddenly once Obama takes the helm, people suddenly believe they are doing a better job?

This is why people like me put very little trust into opinion polls. Obviously, when polls on Congress suddenly jump when Obama takes office, before the Congress has a chance to do anything other than swoon at Obama's feet, it throws up red flags regarding the validity of the polls.

Interestingly, however, even with all of the bias, Obama's numbers are going down as time passes, though slowly. Hmmm, I wonder if the press will ever allow those numbers to dip below 50%?