The media is at it again, hyping polls as if they are somehow the story of the day. Last week CBS was busted for clearly seeking to get the "all time low" approval numbers for the President, and skewing a poll through oversampling of different groups to get their desired result. It was through an argument in the comments of that post with a liberal that I actually was forced to find documentation of party affiliation which I can now use to blast the AP-Ipsos poll that is the subject of this post, as well.

First of all, Yahoo!'s home page has their little 6 or 7 headlines that come from the wire services and sit for differing amounts of time on the home page. There has to be a person physically rotating the articles that appear, because sometimes they're there for minutes, other times for over a day. Well I noticed a little while ago, and it's still up now, that the top story in the list is entitled "Bush's approval rating hits new low". Before I dismantle this, let me just predict that if there isn't some huge explosive news item today, this will remain there all day long.

Okay, here's the first thing. When you get in to the article, if you're looking for this "new low", you'll scroll down to this paragraph:

The poll suggests that most Americans wonder whether Bush is up to the job. The survey, conducted Monday through Wednesday of 1,000 people, found that just 37 percent approve of his overall performance. That is the lowest of his presidency.

Okay, so I decided that I'd see if I could find the actual poll from AP-Ipsos to see the way questions were asked, etc. I did, and you can check it out here. Here's a partial screen shot of the approval section:

Notice the red circles I added to point out that this isn't a "new low". Busted, lie number one. By their count, he was at 37% in polls they conducted in both November and October. In fact the disapproval right now is 60% and that was actually 61% in November! So again, this may be matching his previous low, but it's not a "new" low, and there's no spinning that. FLAT OUT LIE. I suspect this is why they chose not to use the "new low" term in the article. They just use it in the headline because they are trying to create a news story where one doesn't actually exist.

Want more? I mean, obviously no one thinks 37% is good, but the point is that I've just proven a lie, plain and simple and that was all I initially set out to do... BUT THERE'S MORE!

I have noticed that party affiliation has a lot to do with the sneaky ways that the MSM gets their poll results to say what they want them to say. Simply put, they like to oversample Democrats which obviously leads to lower approval for President Bush, a Republican. Here's the breakdown from the current poll in question:

So of the 1000 people polled, 29% were Republican, and 35% were Democrats... What's the problem? Well, the most recent party affiliation poll I can find is this one done in February, by the Pew Research Center, which shows the actual party affiliation breakdown is as follows:

So Pew says the actual breakdown is 30% Republican to 33% Democrat. Doesn't seem like much, but when you're talking about hitting a "new low" (which again, isn't "new" anyway) that can make a big difference. Any statisticians out there want to do the math? Also, if someone finds evidence that a more recent breakdown matches what the AP-Ipsos poll used, send it over and I'll note that. Wouldn't make the headline any less of a lie, but it would make the actual results more believable.

Now I know the libs are all going to scream at me for nitpicking and say "his numbers are still low, who cares if it's not a record"... The point, my foes, is that the AP is lying in their headline to create news, rather than report it. They are acting as if this is some shocking new poll, and Yahoo! is complicate by pumping it on top of their front page, like there isn't anything bigger going on in the world. Again, there without this being a record (and even if it had been really) this isn't "news" worthy of the attention they want it to have. The reason they're pumping it and lying in the headline is because negative news further hurts the President, it's really that simple.

I wonder how many others are picking up this wire story with the lying headline. A quick search reveals that The Charlotte Observer and The Times of Northwest Indiana have.

No surprise here, but ABC News has picked it up too. Of course you know my history with ABC News. They put out the lying headline and added subheadline about the Toledo riots in reaction to a neo-Nazi rally that never happened, saying that hundreds of neo-Nazis protested, etc. (flashback a ways down in this post, if you aren't familiar.) I suspect, like with that, even if ABC is emailed repeatedly, they'll refuse to take down the lie. They've still got the Toledo riot one up today and that was six months ago! They told me they were looking in to it, but obviously nothing happened.

Fox News isn't innocent here either, they're running this wire story as well. Sify News (?) is running it as well. The Boston Globe is guilty too.

WSBTV is using a proper headline in the article, but in the Yahoo! News search it says "Bush's Approval Rating Slumps To Lowest Ever". I suspect someone there did the brain surgery I did to figure out the AP lie, and changed the headline.

I'll make this easier, check out this Google News search for 'bush approval hits new low" . Right now it goes 8 pages deep with sites picking up the wires story. I know in the case of the Toledo situation I mentioned earlier, the AP itself fixed the mistake (but didn't issue a large public retraction), though a few (like ABC) kept the original lying story. Most removed the lying story eventually. I wonder what will happen in this case, as through this Google News search we see that many are using the new headline "Voters Down On Bush, Congress And State Of Nation".

I wonder how long this story will remain the top story on Yahoo! with the lying headline which I see has now been changed to Bush's approval rating falls to new low... Um, that's not much different than "hits", and it's still a lie guys.. try again.

Anyway, in closing, here's the evidence for the lie incase they manage to clean up their mess:

UPDATE
Looks like Real Clear Politics sees that this isn't a "new" low too.

OTHER BLOGGERS:

Ace of Trumps wants the party affiliation numbers and we've got 'em.

The Tension has more on the bias in the numbers of this poll:

Outside the Beltway is blogging on this poll as well.

Scott Ott at ScrappleFace is mocking

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