Showing posts with label polls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label polls. Show all posts

Friday, January 16, 2015

Who do you believe?

We got two polls out this morning.  Reuters, and Gallup.  Reuters scores Obama at 37%, where as Gallup has him much higher, at 46%. Both Reuters and Gallup have good reputations going back 80 years or more.  Both base their results on small samples of the population, 1000 to 1500.  It takes great care and skill to select a representative sample.  Select an unrepresentative sample, say at a Tea Party meeting or a ACLU gathering, and you can get just about any results imaginable. 
   I like the lower Reuters number myself, but perhaps it is too good to be true. 
   So what does one believe? 

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Presidential leadership

Or lack thereof.  The TV news is calling for "presidential leadership" on the matter of ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State. By which they mean Obama coming on TV and explaining to the voters why we need to kick some ass in ISIS.
    The newsies have a point.  The voters are anti war, and won't change their minds without the president  expressing a need and a reason for going back to Iraq.  Until he does, the electorate isn't going to go along. 
    And, I think it is safe to predict that Obama is never going to call for military action in Iraq.  Neither is the Congress.  The Republicans and Democrats in Congress are having so much fun trashing each other, they couldn't get behind a single resolution on Iraq or on anything else for that matter. 
   Even worse, there is some doubt in my mind that the voters would  follow Obama's leadership.  His standing in the polls is abysmal.  He has given so many speeches full of motherhood and apple pie, but totally lacking in substance, that few people bother to listen to him anymore.  His constant output of  Pablum is boring.