Scott Rasmussen’s Conservative-Friendly Question-Wording
Politico says that Barack Obama’s foreclosure-mitigation plan is in political trouble because we’re “a nation of Santellis”. The basis for the piece is a Rasmussen poll which asks “Some people say that having the government subsidize mortgage payments for financially troubled homeowners puts the government in the position of rewarding bad behavior. Is the government rewarding bad behavior when it provides subsidies to those who are most at risk of losing their homes?” The results are 55 yes and 32 no.
Bad news for Barack Obama. But at the same time, when The Washington Post asked if people support Obama’s plan over 60 percent said yes. And The New York Times got a similar result. The difference is striking:
The difference, obviously, is question-wording. Josh Marshall remarks parenthetically:
On the question of the quality of Rasmussen polls in general, I’ve been watching them closely now through at least two cycles. The toplines tend to be a bit toward the Republican side of the spectrum, compared to the average of other polls. But if you factor that in they’re pretty reliable. And the frequency that Rasmussen is able to turn them around — because they’re based on robocalls — gives them added value in terms of teasing out trends. But the qualitative questions, in terms of their phrasing and so forth, are frequently skewed to give answers friendly toward GOP or conservative viewpoints. All of which is to say that his numbers are valuable. But they need to be read with that bias in mind. On the separate question of whether robocalls are as ‘good’ as traditional live question polls, I think they’ve held up quite well over the last two cycles. I see little evidence that SurveyUSA’s poll haven’t stood up as well as those done by live phone callers.
To really understand this dynamic, you need to read my friend Dave Weigel’s story on Rasmussen for The Washington Independent. Dave doesn’t editorialize in his reporting, but if you read between the lines I think a pretty clear picture emerges. Rasmussen is a pretty good pollster whose results are within the range of accuracy one wants from a pollster. But polling is a crowded business. And Rasmussen doesn’t also have a daily newspaper or a television network to tout his results. His business, however, requires attention. So how does he get that attention? Well in part he gets it with issue polling that, while basically methodologically sound, has question-wording that’s designed to lead to conservative-friendly results.
Then the results come out and conservatives tout the results as vindicating their position. It’s free PR for Rasmussen, it’s a morale booster and message-driver for the right. And because the basic horserace polling is accurate enough, these kind of shenanigans don’t get Rasmussen dismissed as a surveyor.
And I don’t really think he should be dismissed. But I think we need to understand his “issue” polling as more like message testing than like normal public opinion research. What we’re learning from his result isn’t that there’s a “nation of Santellis” out there outraged about Obama’s plan. We’re learning that support for the plan isn’t so rock-solid as to be immune to leading questions or negative characterizations.
32 Responses to “Scott Rasmussen’s Conservative-Friendly Question-Wording”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
February 24th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
We’re a nation of loudmouth douchebag TV commentators who stand in front of Wall Street traders to spout crazy right wing theories of our economic collapse based on stereotypes of small business values?
February 24th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Thanks for the link. As to why Rasmussen’s election polling is so accurate, it’s pretty obvious – there’s only so many ways to ask the question “Do you support Candidate X or Candidate Y”? If he reframed the questions from a conservative perspective, and said “Do you support Candidate X, who wants to give your tax money to people who lied on their mortgage applications, or Candidate Y, who did not?” he would get a much different answer… and a wrong answer, since that’s not what voters were thinking.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Matt says:
“when The Washington Post asked if people support Obama’s plan over 60 percent said yes.”
But, how many of the respondents know what Obama’s plan is?
For that matter, does the Washington Post know? Does Obama know?
Last time I checked on the mortgage plan, the Post had an article saying the Obama Administration hadn’t figured out yet who would get the money, which is of course the critical question.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Well it’s not that the wording is different in Rasmussen’s poll; he’s asking an entirely different question: “does Obama’s plan reward bad behavior?” If I were asked that, I’d probably say yes, though I strongly support the plan. And I don’t think that’s inconsistent.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
imagine if the question went like this;
“do you support rewarding irresponsible behavior of investors or the gambling debts of banks?”
“do you support renegotiating home loans to market value rather then the bank inflated value”
February 24th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Like Chachy said.
Does subsidizing mortgage payments sometimes reward bad behavior? Yes. In the current macroeconomic environment, do we need to subsidize mortgage payments even though that will in some cases reward bad behavior? Yes.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
What Steve Sailer said—without knowing the details of the plan, opinion polls are almost meaningless.
When bailing out homeowners, it seems important to me to conduct some sort of distinction between the unfortunate (e.g., those who can’t make mortgage payments because they’ve lost their job) and the recklessly stupid (those who took out mortgages for which they were absurdly unqualified.) It seems to me that a plan which makes that distinction would have widespread support.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Shorter MattY: “If the Ukrainian grain output is 5% below expected, just change the numbering system until it’s 5% above expected!”
This is reminiscent of ImmigrationReform, something that a slim majority support when they’re asked the question in a special way. If the question included all the downsides of that “reform”, only the most hardcore liberals and far-lefties would support it.
P.S. Here’s more on Dave Weigel.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I work with survey data and have worked with people who design surveys. If you read any decent book on how to design, administer and analyze surveys, you will see a chapter that warns you that question order and wording can easily bias the results, often severely. You will find instructions on how to design the survey to detect, and if such bias may be important, eliminate or at least detect how much the question order and wording may distort the results.
So, in my opinion, Rasmussen’s efforts, and any pollster who uses similar methods, is not methodologically sound.
MY needs to read himself an introductory book on survey design. It should be an easy read for an Ivy Leaguer.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
It’s nice of 24AheadDotCom to end every post with a link to Obama birth certificate trutherism, just in case anyone was about to take him seriously.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Meanwhile, as a “Nation of Santellis” have just about had it with your profligacy, a group of Chinese investors have landed on the West Coast to pick the bone of our real estate market.
I, for one, welcome our new Chinese Overloads!
February 24th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
The framing here is especially important. Sure, Matt could argue this morning, too, that the dumb decisions weren’t the borrowers, and others would argue back. (I’d say one could have recognized the bubble, but the lack of regulation of all these new financial practices was shameful and a root cause all the same needing addressing, apart from bailout plans.) But moralizing itself has its limits, if your goal is to allow families to survive and keep them from taking the conomy for the rest of us.
Thus, not letting them get away with this moral phrasing of the issue is critical. And we should also keep emphasizing how the three-point Obama plan really is geared to anticipate that criticism by NOT putting most of it into bailing out speculative idiots. Thus, a Rasmussan poll could easily test drive a line that will be used to feed a lie.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Politico is a workplace of Santellis. The rest of the country isn’t.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I went onto Real Clear Politics yesterday to look at Obama’s approval numbers. There were 22 separate polls there, 4 of which were by Rasmussen.
Every single Rasmussen poll had Obama with a disapprove number in the 30s. Not a single one of the the other pollsters had that number in the thirties.
That is to say, 4/4 Rasmussen polls had that number in the 30s, while 0/18 of everybody else’s polling had that number in the 30s.
Rasmussen is an extreme outlier. I’ll withhold speculation on why this is so.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Both Matt and Josh seem overly diplomatic here. Regardless of the quality of Rasmussen’s other work, the wording of that question is a joke. It says “some people say this,” gives no indication of what the other people are saying, and asks if the respondent agrees. You don’t have to have any experience with polls to know that this wording rigs the question. It’s one step above a phony push-poll question, if at all.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Dave Weigel writes: It’s nice of 24AheadDotCom to end every post with a link to Obama birth certificate trutherism, just in case anyone was about to take him seriously.
And, that’s coming from someone who wrote about me and then wouldn’t approve a follow-up comment I left showing how he was wrong. Then, when he replied to my post about that, he showed that he doesn’t understand the basic facts of this case, that he doesn’t understand basic concepts like “evidence” and “proof”, and that he’s not a real reporter but instead is simply a hack working for a Soros- and Rockefeller-funded pseudo-paper.
If Weigel wants to show how I’ve got everything completely wrong, it’s incredibly easy and I’ve even repeatedly urged him to do it. All he has to do is pick up the phone, call Hawaii, get their answers to some questions that confirm his assumptions, and then print their response. I’ve even included the phone number he should call and the name of the person he should speak to. Heck, I’ll pay up to $5 for the phone call.
Yet, Weigel continually refuses to try to confirm his assumptions. And, that’s because he’s simply a hack who realizes he’s wrong, even if he’s afraid to say it.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I agree with the idea that there is plenty of blame to be spread around, but only a small fraction to fall on borrowers?
If you take out a mortgage you should expect to have to make repayments. People do have a responsibility to think the financial implications of taking out a loan of that size. Clearly there is blame should go to those selling and repackaging those loans, but surely those taking out the loans should believe they are capable of paying them back.
Another way of thinking about the banking bailout that is politically impossible for people to say, is that it is effectively subsidising people who have taken out bad loans. Mortgage losses are not originating at the banks, but with the original homeowners, and it is them (albeit in a very inefficient way) that taxpayers will effectively end up bailing out. The impression being given that this money goes entirely to the banks is only partially true.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
I think it is fairly certain that the public has no idea what Obama’s housing plan is. As long as it works I thing it is fairly certain that the public will never know what Obama’s housing plan is.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Well, if Rasmussen is scientifically unsound, his little contrivances shouldn’t be called polls.
If he’s just rigging his polls enough to be believable, that’s even worse.
The guy’s a fraud and an anti-democratic torture enabler.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
The Rasmussen poll on any given political issue is always an outlier. That’s been obvious for some time, ever since Bush’s job approval ratings went down below 30 percent (except in the Rasmussen poll).
February 24th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
duBois gets a two-fer!
1. Most people have no idea what Bush had in store for them. It was one of the most anti- and un-American plans I’ve ever heard of. Thus, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the Dems were completely silent about it.
2. The ads in those papers only list the supposed address of BHO’s parents. They don’t indicate where or in which hospital BHO was born.
All these things start with the blogger: if MattY could actually think through posts, people like duBois might actually be encouraged to likewise think things through first.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Lone Wacko spent 2005 and 2006 assuring us that anti-immigrant politics were going to dominate the 2006 elections, and pro-reform candidates were going to get slaughtered.
So.
How’s that going?
February 24th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Look. I am not behind on my mortage and I was very responsible and still have considerable equity in my house because I put down a huge downpayment.
Shouldn’t I get help paying my mortgage from the government too???
Oh wait, I work for a company that would be out of business now if it weren’t for the TARP money. So my ENTIRE PAYCHECK is due to a government handout.
So, I guess I am saying that I am not satisified with keeping a good income because the government bailed me out.
More, More, MORE, I am still not satisfied!!!!
Sorry Tom Lehrer
February 24th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
David Weigel is a hack, and until he shows me his mother’s hooha, only hacks will believe that he was actually born.
February 24th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
I sense they’re less whiny about homeowners’ tax deductions.
March 26th, 2009 at 10:14 am
Buy Propecia…
http://www.folkd.com/user/buypropeciaonline Buy Propecia…
April 1st, 2009 at 11:41 am
I found this posting through a Google search for: “rasmussen poll conservative liberal” because for the past two days I have seen poll questions that were more appropriate for a Karl Rove push poll. Yesterday it was “do you favor raising taxes on people making more than 100,000 a year” and today it was “88% Say It’s Important To Keep The Dollar As America’s Currency”. I suppose this is rasmussen’s raison d’etre, to ask questions whose only advocates are conservative radio’s straw men
April 6th, 2009 at 1:31 am
uwdjxb rbjmf tpkc xsbd vgryjkcad toxfbku mjbonc