A Zogby Poll Revisited

Awhile back, I noted that a new poll on Terri Schiavo was being touted as vindication by certain social conservatives of their view that "most Americans" backed what the President and the Congress did in attempting to get a de novo review of the Terri Schiavo case. Of the poll, I asked the following.

Absent from the cited report, Malkin's post, or a David Limbaugh post on the subject is whether most Americans viewed Schiavo as being in a coma (correctly or not) or being terminally ill or being on a form of "life support." Furthermore, if the following question was asked, "If you were Terri Schiavo, would you have wanted to be kept alive?" none of these three mentioned the results. An even more glaring omission, either from the above poll or this reporting, is the more important question of whether the American people favored what Bush and the Congress did! (And, in the manner of Malkin, might I suggest explaining just what a bad precedent this would set before asking the question. They need to know the facts of the case, after all.) Americans are remarkably able to separate what they wish to be done from what they know ought to be done by their government. But then, the near-total absence of these concerns from her blog shows me that Malkin cares less about such niceties than the social conservative agenda. Within its scope, this poll was probably just as "fair" as the others, but Malkin is twisting the meaning of its results.

Well, apparently, this poll wasn't even necessarily as "'fair' as the others." I would like to credit Michelle Malkin for admitting a mistake here, but her continued lack of concern for the legal ramifications of the Schiavo debacle make me regard this as more the maintenance of the appearance of objectivity than any real admission of error. As I've noted before, the appearance of objectivity can be misused.

Nevertheless, Malkin admitted today that, "now some skeptical bloggers ... are revisiting the poll and asking questions about the sponsors, poll wording, and reporting on the poll." Malkin quotes one Bob Felton as saying,

A Zogby spokesperson described the poll to me as a joint-effort between themselves and the Christian Defense Coalition, and explicitly refused to vouch for the questions and responses reported by LifeNews. I’d have to talk to the Christian Defense Coalition about that, I was told. (So far as I understand the relationship, by the way, Zogby is acting properly. The work done by a consultant for a client is the property of the client; the information isn’t Zogby’s to give away.)

The LifeNews story did not disclose the Christian Defense Coalition as the source, intimating that Zogby was.

The Christian Defense Coalition has not returned phone calls, and LifeNews has not responded to an e-mail inquiry asking whether they stand by their story.

Heh! Somehow, that doesn't surprise me! In addition, she links to a good post by Football Fans for Truth, which reveals something interesting about that the much-ballyhooed question that supposedly showed that "a 'whopping' 79% responded that the disabled person 'should not' be denied food and water." The question was actually about whether the public would favor intervention in the case of a patient's "basic civil rights" being violated, and further analysis of other results shows that this was indeed not how most Americans interpreted a feeding tube removal.

Go through the two posts pointed to by Malkin if you might want to learn how to go about investigating a poll. I found that to be quite interesting and it might prove useful down the road.

So much for damage control by poll for the religious right....

-- CAV

Updates

4-13-05: Fixed some format problems.