Why does the LAT allow Andrew Malcolm to continue to misrepresent polling?
December 10, 2009 6:19 pm ET by Jamison Foser
Los Angeles Times reporter -- and former Laura Bush flak -- Andrew Malcolm struggles with many aspects of his current career, but reporting on polls may give him the most trouble.
Lately, the erstwhile Bush aide has appeared to be auditioning for a gig with Sarah Palin by -- among other things -- repeatedly offering absurd apples-and-oranges comparisons of Palin's favorability rating with President Obama's job approval rating.
But Malcolm outdid himself today, shoe-horning in a sentence about Palin's favorability rating into a blog post about public skepticism that Obama has done enough to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize:
Almost nearly not quite one-in-five Americans believes that President Obama has accomplished enough to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize that he had to go to Norway in December to collect.
...
Doing the math from those numbers, that means that during the past eight weeks or so the proportion of fellow countrypersons who think the Chicago Democrat is undeserving of the global-peace-prize distinction has gone from an overwhelming 67% majority up to a gargantuan, ground-shaking tsunami landslide majority of 80%.
Perhaps having something to do with the same award-winning U.S. president having just ordered another 30,000 combat soldiers into the increasingly unpopular and peaceless battle for Afghanistan. A subject Obama might address in his address. (Text here later.)
Meanwhile, the favorability rating of Republican Sarah Palin, an unemployed itinerant author, have climbed back up to 46% from a summertime low of 39%.
So now Malcolm is comparing Palin's favorable ratings to the number of people who think Obama deserves the Nobel? That isn't apples and oranges, that's apples and ... I don't know, rattlesnakes, maybe. Or frisbees. Something very much unlike an apple, anyway.
Meanwhile, that Palin favorability rating Malcolm thinks is so darn impressive? It's 46 percent -- with a 46 percent unfavorability rating. Palin's unfavorable rating is just one point lower than John Edwards'. Her net fav/unfav is significantly worse than that of Vice President Joe Biden, who Malcolm mocks daily. Palin's numbers, in other words, are not good. Malcolm has to invent bogus comparisons in order to make them look good. (Well, that's not quite true: He could simply note that she has lower unfavorable ratings than Dick Cheney.)
What is that? The new math? And that's the first eight words of his entry!
So, yes, it is the new math. Mr. Malcom, unlike those who read your work uncritically, I went and did a little of my own research on the CNN poll you are hawking.
Guess what? You missed a few things in your haste to call bad news down on our President's head.
You can find the poll here.
Among other things, the second sentence of the article in which the poll appears:
Then there is the second paragraph:
You had little difficulty seizing on the 19 percent (Almost nearly not quite one-in-five Americans, remember?), but skipped over the majority who say he either does deserve it, or will earn it before he leaves office. Then you said:
Really? Based on what, wishful thinking? You go on to claim that, according to news reports earlier in the day, President Obama's decision to cancel some of the traditional stops of Peace Prize recipients 'isn't going over to well up there.' From the article you linked to, at the Guardian (UK):
So, it's not a majority of Norwegians who are upset over the President's decision, and the committee itself understood that a sitting President may have a busy schedule that would not allow for all the traditional activities.
By the way, even though they didn't lunch together, Obama did still meet with the Norwegian king. Just my guess based on the recent past, but a luncheon photo up might've given you another chance to see Obama bow, right? Stir up a little more of the right's favorite brew? Tempest in a Teapot? I hear it's not as good warmed over.
What next? Oh, right. Back to the new math:
[quote][Doing the math from those numbers, that means that during the past eight weeks or so the proportion of fellow countrypersons who think the Chicago Democrat is undeserving of the global-peace-prize distinction has gone from an overwhelming 67% majority up to a gargantuan, ground-shaking tsunami landslide majority of 80%./quote]
So, neither math nor the English language are your friends, are they Mr. Malcom? You claim that just because 20% think Obama deserved the Peace Prize, 80% must automatically be opposed, but the poll doesn't bear that out, does it? Really, neither does common sense, but I suspect you are just as deficient in that as well.
Uh-oh. You didn't stop there? Ooops.
First mistake? You linked to the LA Times piece that claimed to interpret the poll, rather than the poll itself, which is here.
Also, you are conflating job approval ratings for Obama with favorability ratings with Palin. Palin stands at 46% favorable, and 46% unfavorable. So, I did what you should've done: research.
(from Slate.com)
So, basically what you've written here is propaganda. It wasn't properly researched, it wasn't properly sourced, and it certainly never saw the dark red pen of an editor. It also failed to reflect reality as it is, but it gives a good picture of reality as you wish it to be. If only there was a market for news from Neverland.
1. Malcolm, like every other Nobel naysayer, declines to name someone whom he thinks would be more worthy for the award. This makes his entire contention meaningless.
2. Malcolm thinks, erroneously, that labeling someone a "Chicago Democrat" is a tremendous insult. By doing so, he is (a) not showing proper respect for the office of the president, and (b) insulting Chicagoans. This foolishness is on a par with his writing and math skills.
3. Malcolm identifies Palin as an author, when it is an open secret that her book was ghostwritten (as will be anything from George & Laura, no doubt).