Posted on 09/07/2011 2:57:12 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
There have been many pundits, news writers, and bloggers recently, who have cited a specific Fox News poll while giving us the "reasons" that they think Governor Palin should stay out of the 2012 presidential race. Considering that the poll has a Fox News label on it, we as conservatives are supposed to believe that it is entirely credible. There are some problems with that, and "credible" isn't a word I would use in association with the numbers they came up with. Here's why...
The section of the poll that is being touted by the media and by the governor's detractors states:
Should Palin Run?
All in all, most voters -- 74 percent -- think Palin should stay on the sidelines in 2012. Just 20 percent think she should run for president.
The groups most likely to support Palin running are white evangelical Christians (30 percent) and Tea Party members (28 percent). Still, majorities of those groups do not think she should run (62 percent and 66 percent respectively). In addition, 72 percent of conservatives, 71 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of independents think Palin should stay out.
Women (77 percent) are a bit more likely than men (71 percent) to say Palin should sit this one out.
Just among women, Republicans (26 percent) are more likely than independents (24 percent) and Democrats (15 percent) to think Palin should run.
What these people leave out of their reports is perhaps the most interesting fact about the poll altogether. It states (emphasis):
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 911 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from August 29 to August 31. For the total sample, it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Now, just who is Shaw & Company Research? Alexander Burns from Politico writes:
The Shaw in Shaw & Company is Daron Shaw, a University of Texas political science professor and veteran of several GOP campaigns, whose name has been in the news a bit lately.
That's because Shaw is one of the starring players in Sasha Issenberg's e-book, "Rick Perry and His Eggheads: Inside the Brainiest Political Operation in America," which details a groundbreaking set of experiments that Shaw and three other academics conducted inside Perry's 2006 reelection campaign.
The Perry campaign allowed the so-called eggheads to run tests on "anything [they] could figure out how to randomize, from lawn signs to television ads," Issenberg writes, and they assembled a provocative set of findings on which kinds of campaign tactics really work.
Fast forward five years and Perry is running for president and Shaw is one of the lead pollsters for the most influential cable network, by far, among GOP primary voters.
I've read the 30 page book that Burns is talking about, so don't be distracted by the fact that he writes for Politico. What he wrote is accurate, you can see for yourself here.
Now, Shaw maintains that there wasn't a conflict of interest in doing the poll for Fox because Perry didn't pay him and the other "eggheads" for their services. Even though he and the others were very much a part of Perry's political team, he claims that " we're stupid, we never entered into any business relationship with Perry." But given the huge numbers for Perry in the poll and the fact that Team Perry is determined to keep Governor Palin out of the race, something isn't right with Fox using Shaw's agency to gather numbers for a conservative audience.
There is also the fact that the Fox poll numbers are very different from a poll that CNN conducted just this last July. Ian noted at the time:
55% of Republican and Republican-leaning independents want Governor Palin to run.
That is a huge difference between the Shaw and Anderson Robbins (Fox poll) numbers. When you see that big of a shift in that short amount of time, you know something isn't right. The fact that Fox used somebody that the Perry people trust and allowed close access to, should send off alarms to more than just the writers at Politico.
I really don’t pay any attention to polls this far out.
Check this out. I wonder if the PerryKrishna brigade and all their poll quoting trolls will come on and splain this.........
Sounds like “shoot the messenger” sour grapes to me.
Good catch on who conducted the poll.
Polls.
They have zero influence on me.
I always figure they’re slanted, rigged, etc.
“Polls (Poles) are for strippers and cross-country skiers.”
Sarah Palin
I would also add that if Perry's guys are conducting this poll, it would be for their own research 1st. Unless Perry, who has never lost an election, prefers his men lie to him by fudging numbers.
Hmmm. What happened between the July CNN poll and this Fox News poll? What could it be? Oh, I know! Perry declared his candidacy.
Since Perry wasn't a candidate in July, it's not unreasonable or suspicious that the poll numbers would change significantly after his entry into the race.
Let me guess, the pollster oversampled illegal aliens.
This reminds me of those articles that attempt to invalidate any study that questions anthropomorphic global warming, because one of the authors was once a member of a think tank that accepted money from Exxon in 1986.
I don’t have a problem with Sarah Palin running personally. I DO have a problem with her basically toying with the electorate by dawdling about and causing all this speculation about whether or not she’ll enter the race.
She should just jump in now. The sooner she does, the sooner the Gringo de Mexico from Texas can run home crying to his momma.
Geez, the poll is about disapproval of Gov. Palin, not how well Gov. Perry was/is doing.
I’m taking that!
It's obvious that FNC took a sharp left right after the 2008 election as Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch docided to broaden their appeal to everyone to the right of CNN.
They decided to follow a tried and true RINO tactic - move as far to the left as possible without totally alienating conservatives.
Outside of Sarah Palin, what reliable conservative is on FNC? Sean Hannity claims to be a conservative, but when push comes to shove, he sides with the GOP establishment and, to be honest, Hannity couldn't make a solid defense of conservatism if his life depended on it.
The rest is a collection of RINOs (Rove, Perino, etc.), neocons (Kristol, Krathammer) and liberals (Whore-aldo, Beckel, etc.). Yet there FReepers who still believe FNC is solidly conservative and watch it religiously (unless WWE is on).
A good example is her disapproval rating. There are numerous polls from different compaies showing her disapproval rating in the low to mid 60's. Since that number is consistent across polling companies and has consistently been at that level for over a year, I can accept that it is probably accurate.
Yes, it is discouraging, some of the people FOX News has on. I watch it, because CNN is horribly PC and MSNBC is a sewer.
And yes, I watch WWE from time to time (Monday Night Raw).
See the Perrywinkles grow! Grow, Perrywinkles, grow! Hurry, before Rick is shown to be a dirty trickster!
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