posted 11-05-2003 12:58 AM            

(Note that Zogby was the only pollster to get the dead heat between gore and bush right,
Every other pollster claimed bush by 6 points or more)

Zogby:
"We count every Republican response twice on the belief that they are more likely to be out working and earning a living."
(thus less likely home to answer the phone)

Several other pollsters commented there was "tremendous pressure to interpret the margin of error in favor of Republicans."

'From whom did this pressure come?' was asked.

Answer: "The RNC."

Point of this post?

Unless all these pollsters were just lying;

Polls are no longer done to gauge opinion.
Polls are now done to influence opinion.

Those stats are the same lies told in 2000 in Bush vs Gore.
meaning it's a dead heat between Bush and Clark right now.

And Bush is still supressing
-truth about 911; with holding documents from the "911 Investigating committee"
-truth about the fiasco in Iraq;
-any real investigation into the FELONY outing of the CIA agent in the yellowcake uranium fraud.

Don't believe polls!

Polls results are designed to form your opinion, not to reflect your opinion.

Bush's approval rating is now 51% among Republicans,
is what that poll really says.

He is about to lose his own party.

Let us pray a little truth leaks past the conservatives' media filters.

posted 11-06-2003 01:15 PM            

You can't trust them and they're not accurate anyway -- skewed -- used for influence!

Zogby, however, has to be the most trustworthy poll source.

Keep up the good work!

posted 11-06-2003 01:35 PM            

The Other One's in Trouble Too
By Peter Preston
The Guardian

Monday 29 September 2003

President Bush's ratings in the US opinion polls are at an all-time low
Oh, he's got trouble. No, not him: the other one. Public opinion polls, as scoffing politicians always say, aren't the real thing: but, in a country where elections of any meaningful kind only happen every two years, they're the next best thing. And too many terrible polling results can give a case of the shakes far beyond Bournemouth.

Watch George Bush's hand, for instance, as he does his courtly grovel for the Queen in November. A tremor here? A clenched fist there? Nobody should be surprised if the latest sets of American polls carry on heading south at their current rate. Smile a rictus smile and examine a sampling from the last few days.

A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll finds that only 50% now approve of the overall job Bush is doing - down from this year's high of 71% in April. That's the president's lowest rating since he took office. Match him against a Democratic challenger without a name or a face - just Mr Watch-this-space - on the Zogby poll and he loses 45% to 41%.

Fox News (Rupert's finest) produces a poll split 39% to 39% if an election were held today. June set those figures at 51% to 30%. NBC and Wall Street Journal pollsters currently find only 49% backing George - another all-time low on that index. And if you prefer to investigate individual state results, the evidence seems chilling enough. An Arizona Republic poll reports that a mere 34% of deep west voters are backing the Texas cowboy for re-election in a state which he won easily by six points in 2000.The rot is wide and the rot is deep.

Remember those 90% ratings after 9/11? You can forget them now, probably for ever. Of course they were phony, puffed by fear and pride: but they're only one benchmark in charting decline. A much more relevant one is the way, month by month through this torrid summer, Bush's ratings have sunk, and sunk again.

It's not disastrous yet. He has a world-record war chest and a rich party betting everything on a second triumph. The economy - stubbornly refusing to see jobless figures falling - could perk up soon. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden could row into Guantanamo Bay waving white hankies on sticks. Jacques Chirac could eat humble croissant at the UN. Events, great and small, can make a huge difference. But there are still good Republican reasons to grow pensive.

One, curiously, is the enfeebled state of the Democratic party. Two debates in and we're no better placed to guess who'll make it through the long night of the primaries. Howard Dean is leading by miles in New Hampshire, which will give him a lift. Chaps from North Carolina are doing well in South Carolina. Wesley Clark, the ex-Nato commander in Kosovo and CNN Iraq analyst, is actually ahead of the pack on some polls (though only, as the Wall Street Journal notes acidly, when voters are reminded that he's "General" Wesley Clark: put on a cap with braid and half of America still salutes automatically).

A field too weak to provide a winner? Perhaps. Opposition challenges always look lacklustre before the voters start to sort them out. But these, remember, are the generic Democrats, the watch-this-spaces handing Bush a drubbing on most polls. They're misty going on non-existent, but they can still give George a fright. Their weakness mirrors his fundamental weakness.

Worse, none of the big issues are working for the White House. When Fox asks whether tax cuts have helped family finances this year, a full 61% says no. The number of Americans who think the Iraq war was worth it has slumped from 64% in April to 46% today. And the underlying currents of three years ago keep swirling along. America was divided then, riven down the middle with no more than a few hanging chads to make a difference - and it is divided again now.

The aftermath of 9/11 produced the illusion of unity. Its fading reveals that the basic splits in American opinion are as stark as ever in this half and half society. What do the papers say? Take a brisk weekend spin around Texas.

The Dallas Morning News, by some distance the state's lone journalistic star, leads with a poignant story on the families of the 19 soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas, who've died in Iraq. "So much more than statistics". The Houston Chronicle has a brusque editorial taking the Bush boys to task over the WMDs that will probably "never be found". Not only will the administration not admit the truth, it snarls, "it repeats claims demonstrably proved false and recanted by the president, as if patriotism had no need of facts". And if you want to wade through the gathering storm involving Dick Cheney, his old Halliburton corporation and its billions of contracts in Iraq, then welcome to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

These issues - issues of violent death, confusion and alleged corruption - aren't like, say, foundation hospitals. They are simple and inferential. They grind away, even in Mr Bush's own ranch backyard. They presage 13 rough, raw months to come. They should also, in prospect, give us pause.

We've become too glibly used, over the last couple of years, to lumping American policy and this American president together in a bumper bundle called "anti-Americanism", leader and country coated in identical opprobrium. It was always simplistic rubbish. It stands exposed as such now. There are many Americas and many churnings to its democracy. There are also many facets of specialness to any relationship. Maybe we didn't remember that when we plunged heedlessly into supportive action last spring. But what goes around comes around: and those polls are right around this morning, jogging an open wound of memory.

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