Unreliable source: Amy Holmes advanced Obama approval falsehood on CNN
SUMMARY: CNN's Amy Holmes asserted that President Obama "is the fourth least popular of the past five presidents." In fact, Gallup itself recently reported that, by two different measures, Obama's approval rating is the second highest of any president since 1969.
During the May 3 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, political contributor Amy Holmes asserted that "one of the little-known facts -- The Washington Times reported this last week -- is that, actually, at this point in his presidency, Barack Obama is the fourth least popular of the past five presidents." Holmes added: "You wouldn't know that from the press coverage. And you wouldn't know that George Bush in -- you know, at this point in his presidency in 2001, after having had the recount, not even winning the popular vote, in fact had higher Gallup approvals than Barack Obama does right now."
As Media Matters for America recently documented, this falsehood, which has made its way from a blog post to Fox News to the April 28 Times editorial to which Holmes referred, is based on an apples-to-oranges comparison between an April 20-21 Gallup poll question that asked respondents to "rate the job Barack Obama has been doing as president so far -- excellent, good, just okay, poor, or terrible," and the historical results of the traditional Gallup approval rating poll question that simply asked whether respondents "approve" or "disapprove" of the president's performance. Based on its traditional presidential approval poll question, Gallup itself recently reported that Obama's average approval rating for the first quarter of his first year in office is the highest of any president since 1969 other than Jimmy Carter, and Obama's most recent weekly average approval rating is higher than the April approval ratings of every first-term president since 1969 other than Ronald Reagan.
Contrary to Holmes' claims that Obama "is the fourth least popular of the past give presidents" and that former President Bush "had higher Gallup approvals" than Obama at this point in their respective presidencies, Gallup reported on April 17 that Obama's average approval rating of 63 percent during the first quarter of his first year as president was "the highest since Jimmy Carter's 69% in 1977." The Gallup write-up included the following chart:
Gallup also recently reported that Obama's most recent weekly approval rating of 65 percent -- averaging Gallup's daily poll results from April 20-26 -- is higher than the April approval ratings (poll dates unspecified) of Bush and all presidents since 1969 other than Reagan. According to Gallup, Bush's weekly approval rating from April 2001 was 61 percent. Obama's previous weekly averages were 62 percent approval from March 30-April 5, 61 percent approval from April 6-12, and 62 percent approval from April 13-19. His daily Gallup approval rating has fluctuated between 63 percent and 68 percent since April 26. From Gallup:
Barack Obama's Most Recent Weekly Approval Rating Average 65% (Apr 20-26, 2009)
[...]
Other Elected Presidents in April of First Term:
George W. Bush 61% (April 2001)
Bill Clinton 55% (April 1993)
George H.W. Bush 58% (April 1989)
Ronald Reagan 67% (April 1981)
Jimmy Carter 64% (April 1977)
Richard Nixon 62% (April 1969)
John Kennedy 81% (April 1961)
Dwight Eisenhower 74% (April 1953)
From the May 3 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources:
HOLMES: I was going to say, you know, with this coverage, one of the little-known facts -- The Washington Times reported this last week -- is that, actually, at this point in his presidency, Barack Obama is the fourth least popular of the past five presidents. You wouldn't know that from the press coverage.
And you wouldn't know that George Bush in -- you know, at this point in his presidency in 2001, after having had the recount, not even winning the popular vote, in fact had higher Gallup approvals than Barack Obama does right now.
So I do think --
KURTZ: Although his numbers, we have to say, are pretty good. Now, let me go to the press conference --
HOLMES: They're pretty good, but comparatively. You're asking comparatively how does the press treat these --
KURTZ: OK. Fair enough.
HOLMES: -- politicians differently, and they do.
The WT article was an intentional mispresentation to give mouthpieces like Amy a talking point. They took the results of a poll that used a different methodology and history and compared it against's Gallups which is fundamentally flawed. Just go to Gallup.com to get real accurate information instead of Moonie's misinformation team.
The righties have NO DEFENSE for Obama's popularity. So they just go around saying, "he's not that popular" or "historically, he's only average" as FoxNews.com did on Friday.
That's weak. It's all they have.
You know, you don't HAVE to try to beat him up over EVERYTHING!
I think it'll backfire on them. I think we saw some of that with WPE Bush. He did so much that was worthy of criticism that there was a somewhat constant deluge of it. For the general public, a perception of overkill developed so the worst offenses just got lumped in with the more minor things and weren't taken as seriously as they should have been. We also saw some of that in the election. There was so much use of Obama's middle name by idiots who thought it should get a rise out of people that it lost any impact that it might have had on many.
That doesn't mean that I don't think there should be any response. I just believe that measured, rational explanation of how the talking points are false or misleading along with a contemptuous attitude toward the offenders will minimize the impact of future attacks. Let 'em rant; they're just diluting their own criticisms.
The righties are seriously suffering from Obama derangement syndrome when you start knocking the guy for clear successes like approval rating and saving the kidnapped seamen from Somali pirates.
They make themselves look even silier.
EXACTAMUNDO.
What trips me out is this: aren't these the SAME people who chose Dumbya over Kerry on the basis of whom they'd rather have a beer at a barbecue with??
Another anti-feminist from the "Independent Women's Forum" (funded by the usual far-right corporate charity groups like Olin and Scaife) which was started to demonize Anita Hill during her testimony against Clarence Thomas.
I guess Michelle Bernard and Nancy Pfotenhauer were busy that day, so they went with Amy Holmes, their other media spindoctor.
Gallup's original deception was in headlining their poll, "In First 100 Days, Obama Meets or Exceeds Expectations" They then published data going back to Eisenhauer that showed that Obama's rating at this point was actually the second lowest at 56% good or better.
G.W. Bush - 61%
W. Clinton - 55%
G.H.W. Bush - 58%
J. Carter - 64%
R. Nixon - 62%
J. Kennedy - 81%
D. Eisenhauer - 74%
That was pointed out in a blog by Judith Klinghoffer in the George Mason University's History News Network. The focus was not Obama unpopular, it was Gallup's headline deceptively suggests he's more popular than the statistics show. To exceed expectations one would normally do better than average, not worse.(Unless you're proposing that the expectations for Obama were unusually low.)
Gallup responded with a CYA move by publishing a weekly rating averaged from dailies that showed Obama at 65% and labeled Klinghoffer's blog a "falsehood."
Klinghoffer responded by pointing out that the second set of numbers Gallup gave were from dailies that used different criteria than that applied to the data on the other eight Presidents.
Now, I think 54% good or better is a good rating and it doesn't really matter how he compared to men who had their first hundred days as much as fifty years ago. The Conservatives are making too much out of it. But MMFA has been caught with their pants down. The interpretation was accurate and based on the genuine statistics, not ones cooked up to cover the bias in Gallup's supposedly unbiased operation. This is a case of the Right making too much of an insignificant statistic and of the Left ignoring the evidence to use the lies of one group of Leftwingers to support yet another ill-founded attack on the Right.
It could have been an honest mistake, but it's an arrogant one as well. Still ... it's understandable. Out of all of the unscripted statements made by all of the Conservative and the On-the-more-conservative-side-of-Liberal broadcasters in America the best MMFA can come up with as "Conservative Deceptions" is this meager handful of often dubious or downright erroneous examples which their "oh-so-objective" readers pick up unquestioningly and amplify in to invective or overbroad generalizations that uncannily always result in the opposition being stupid, ignorant and dishonest.
Here are the facts:
On April 20-21, Gallup, along with USA Today, conducted a poll (SEPARATE from its daily approval rating poll), which asked the respondents to rate Obama: Excellent, Good, Just OK, Poor, Terrible.
THIS IS NOT GALLUP'S DAILY APPROVAL RATING POLL.
Just so that it gets through your head I'll repeat it again:
THIS IS NOT GALLUP'S DAILY APPROVAL RATING POLL.
It is a shame that people can't accept these simple, straightforward facts.
If you take the above poll and add the ratings "Excellent" + "Good", you get 56%, which is what the conservatives are quoting as Obama's approval rating. But in this poll, some of the 23$ who voted "Just OK", probably approve of Obama, and those people have been excluded.
You can't take this "Excellent" + "Good" figure and compare it to the approval ratings of past presidents.
If you want to do an apples to apples comparison, compare the "Excellent" + "Good" ratings of Obama with the "Excellent" + "Good" ratings of the past presidents. Unfortunately, I don't believe Gallup has the "Excellent" + "Good" numbers for the past presidents.
If you want to do an oranges to oranges comparison, compare Obama's approval rating after 100 days (63$) to the approval ratings of past presidents, and he comes out way ahead.
Sorry for being patronizing, but I feel like I am explaining this simple concept to a fifth grader.
You may feel embarrassed now, not for being unable to "get" "straight forward facts" but for inappropriately putting on aires of superiority. I'll repeat, inappropriately putting on aires of superiority.
You just don't get it, do you?
Gallup didn't arrive at the approval ratings of the past presidents by adding up "Excellent" + "Good" in a 5-category poll.
The 5-category poll was a one-off poll that USA Today did along with Gallup.
Gallup does a daily approval rating poll where it asks respondents a binary question:
Do you approve/disapprove of the president's performance? Yes/No
They have been doing this for all presidents for a long time.
They HAVE NOT BEEN DOING the 5-category poll for the past presidents - at least there is no record that we have to compare. What we can compare is the binary "Yes/No" approval ratings.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx
Obama's current Gallup approval rating is 67%
And they didn't arrive it by adding "Excellent", "Good", whatever, because they didn't ask that question.
But the earlier forms of the question contained two neutral responses as well and those are presumably not counted as either approval or disapproval. So discarding the neutrals in the poll referred to is a valid assumption as well. The 56% approval stands and the various reporters are in no way wrong in pointing out that this compares unfavorably with the average Presidential approval poll. Therefore MMFA has made a mountain of a mole hill.
Klinghoffer was correct in pointing out that the headline was deceptive. Various reporters were correct in saying that comparison of a Gallup poll on Presidential approval in the first 100 days shows he's less popular than most Presidents since Eisenhauer. But, those that failed to mention Gallup's objection and the daily tracking poll were failing to present the whole story. Just so, those critics who presented only the 65% daily poll results are failing to present the whole story as well. Gallup embraced their results and led their article with the statement, "President Obama begins the second 100 days of his presidency with 56% of Americans believing he has done an excellent or good job thus far ... etc." The methodology has changed so much that it is not accurate to compare in-person interviews in 1953 to phone polls in 2009 anyway, whichwever poll you prefer. If there is a villain in this, it may be Gallup that posted a headline their data could not support.
Each side prefers the answer that best suites their pre-existing beliefs and is hypersensitive to potential failures on the part of the opposition. In keeping with which, I still consider your references to fifth grade offensive and question whether your display of child-like derrogatories reflects more on me or on you.
Your point about "approve - disapprove" has merit. However the methodology has changed so much over time that the argument that the dailies make an appropriate comparison and this one-shot pole does not is neither compelling nor adequate to justify MMFA's condemnation of others for using it as a reference. What's more, Gallup identified the one-shot as the significant indicator in their original posting. In the first paragraoph they announced that Obama's approval rating was 56%. The 65% dailies were virtually a footnote pointing out that another type of survey they did suggested a higher approval. That was compared by Klinghoffer with the ratings Gallup posted on previous Presidents and thus the controversy began. Gallup then tried to backtrack by using their dailies to show a statistic that would justify their headline, "... exceeds expectations ..." "exceeds expectations" requires some qualification. The explanations that followed were mixed with Gallup concluding that Obama had significant support but, as they pointed out, the just good ratings far outnumbered the enthusiastic ones and they identified that as a sign of tentativeness. In other words, "exceeds expectations" was not adequately justified. Klinghoffer refered to a comparison with past Presidents to see how Obama's approval compared with others and posted her observation. Various news services picked that up and, being verifiable but surprising, they reported it. Gallup saw an embarrassment and tried to refocus attention on the dailies. MMFA said "gotcha!" and tried to embarrass conservative media with it. Klinghoffer noted the attention and posted an amendment to her post pointing out that the dailies had different methodology and a different result. I contend that MMFA does not have adequate grounds to claim deception, though I'll grant that this poll's statistical significant does not justify the repeated references to it. It's just not THAT newsworthy.
People tend to credit those that support their beliefs and discredit those who contradict them. This happens on both sides and is no indicator of some perversity on the part of either side, just the type of normal human reactions we hope to rise above, but seldom can for long.
Did it ever occur to you to try to point out something and claim that it isn't true, maybe even present an alternative version of what you think the reality is? That's what discussions are composed of. Instead you join those who appear unable to handle the fact that not everyone agrees with you. Can you really be so naive that you think the only alternative to seeing things the same way you do is either stupidity or dishonesty?
What a sad little world you must live in.
Earth to wingnuts:
People LIKE Obama.
They DO NOT like Bubble Boy.
JUST ACCEPT IT.
What the Right said, regardless of which President had what poll-ratings, was that we didn't want leaders who changed their policies in order to get higher poll ratings. Many of Bush's supporters anticipated that the war in Iraq might well drag on and knew that if it did, eventually the American people would turn against Bush. One of the things we admired about him was that it was clear to us that he understood this as well and was still willing to do what he believed was right.
Obama enjoys high ratings today. But if he didn't, would you want him to abandon his promises? I doubt it. His supporters like him because they believe he will lead the country in directions they want to see it go. They believe that they are right, no matter whether that opinion is a minority or majority one.
The same was true of us Right-wingers and Bush. In the things he did that lead America toward what we believe is greater freedom, which includes defending it from those who seek to harm us from abroad, we liked him. In the things he did that we believe reduce the trend toward freedom, we opposed him. But most of us respected that he was no more influenced by negative opinions from the Right than he was by the same from the Left.
This woman is a total disgrace. I guess she's learned she can get away with it on CNN.
(1) if I'm watching live, I change the channel
(2) if I'm watching it on my DVR, I fast forward past her the moment she opens her mouth.
At best, she is a bobbleheaded idiot. The less I hear from her the better.