Attention, reporters: Personal popularity and job approval are not the same thing
July 20, 2009 1:53 pm ET by Jamison Foser
MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell just said: "When you look at the president and what he's trying to achieve, the newest poll from the Washington Post, ABC, today shows that he personally has 59 percent popularity. You can't knock that, but when you look at the issues ..."
Well, no. The poll in question found that 59 percent of Americans approve of the way Obama is doing his job. (Actual question: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president?") That's different from his "popularity."
I've made this point before, and I suspect some find it pedantic. Here's why it isn't: The whole point of these news reports is that people like Obama, but don't like what he's doing. The distinction between personal popularity and job approval is central to these reports, and reporters consistently get it wrong.
There was a time when reporters seemed to understand this. In 1998, for example, the media frequently made the point that President Clinton's job approval ratings were higher than his personal favorability ratings. But now they blur the difference between those two things, because it plays into their storyline that Obama is popular but his actions are not (a storyline that happens to dovetail with the GOP's caricature of Obama as a substance-free "celebrity.")
Consider two hypothetical sentences:
"People like President Obama personally, but don't like the way he's handling health care and the financial crisis as much."
"People approve of President Obama's overall job performance, but don't like his handling of health care and the financial crisis as much."
Those two sentences have different meanings. Journalists -- who are, after all, professional communicators -- should understand this.
It does President Obama an injustice to claim that polls that find the public approves of his handling of his job merely find that the public personally likes him. And that injustice is a perfect reflection of the Republicans' portrayal of Obama.
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Problem is this: that analysis adds nothing to the network's drama factor or narrative that America is a supposed center-right nation that hates govt intervention, taxes of all kinds and deficits.
So the polls are wrong and whatever Andrea Mitchell, Scott Rasmussen or Matt Drudge tell you is fact is the real truth.
Not some silly poll like Gallup that has Obama today @ 61% approval.
Silly quantative analysis ...
It's unkind to brand today's Americans as dumbed-down but it must be presumed that most don't have the intellectual curiosity to research issues before being polled. For too many it's equal to casting a vote for "American Idol."