Fun with polls

Reuters, reporting today on the results of the Washington Post-ABC News poll:

Poll Finds Nation Split Between Bush, Democrats

Support for Bush has fallen to the point where 48 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for him if the election were held today, while 47 percent said they would vote for the Democratic Party's nominee. Five percent said they did not know.

The findings demonstrate that three years after one of the closest and most bitterly contested elections in U.S. history, in which Bush narrowly defeated former Vice President Al Gore, the nation is once again polarized.

Associated Press, reporting today on the same poll:

Poll suggests Democrats poorly positioned to challenge a weakened Bush

People are evenly divided whether they would support President Bush or the Democratic candidate should the election be held today. Bush fares better against specific candidates, holding leads ranging from 8 to 18 percentage points.

Although both reports mentioned that Bush was vulnerable and running more or less even with Democrats in the abstract, the Reuters report did not mention that Bush has a strong lead against each individual Democrat.

The WaPo itself says that

Bush begins the campaign year with an overall approval rating of 56 percent, according to the new Post-ABC News poll. That number is good by historical standards and masks sharp differences between Republicans and Democrats.

and also that

Democrats, however, are virtually invisible as an effective opposition to a president who commands center stage.

The AP report buried the 56% approval rating oin the final paragraph.

Advice to readers: whenever you see a news "report" about a poll, always go look at the actual poll results. You will learn all kinds of important things that you are not likely to find in any news article. In this case, for example:

59% - 40% say that Bush is honest and trustworthy (including 54% of independent voters). The "Bush lied" canard is working only among self-described Democrats. Also, 61% - 37% agree that the war in Iraq is part of the war against terrorism (among them 50% - 47% of Democrats) , and 58% - 38% think the United States should keep its military forces in Iraq until civil order is restored there, even if that means continued U.S. military casualties.

The most likely Democratic nominee seems to be Howard Dean, who, according to the poll, is leading among Democrats and who would lose to Bush in the general election, 54% - 39%. While that margin would not be quite as large a landslide as, say, Reagan over Mondale or Nixon over McGovern, it would be comparable to Eisenhower's 1956 victory over Adlai Stevenson.

Finally, to the question "Which political party today best represents your ideas about how the United States should be governed -- the Republican Party, the Democratic Party or neither?" The results were:
36% Republican
32% Neither
31% Democrats

Among 18-30 year olds, the Republicans are favored over Neither 38% to 32%, with only 27% going with the Democrats.

Heh.

UPDATE As the German Medienkritik blog points out [scroll down for his summary in English], Der Spiegel also distorts the meaning of the poll with this fantastic headline and intro:

Bush's Approval Sinks

Barely one half of Americans are still satisfied with Bush's performance. A year before the Presidential elections, the Democrats and Republicans are now running even.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at November 02, 2003 09:14 AM