Inside Politics

Phony poll

“ABC and The Washington Post touted how a new poll found two-thirds opposed to a rule change to end Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees, but the language of the question led to the media’s desired answer,” the Media Research Center’s Brent Baker writes at www.mediaresearch.org.

“‘An ABC News poll has found little support for changing the Senate’s rules to help the president’s judicial nominees win confirmation,’ ‘World News Tonight’ anchor Charles Gibson trumpeted Monday night.

“The Washington Post’s lead front-page headline, over a Tuesday story on the poll, declared: ‘Filibuster Rule Change Opposed.’ But the questions in the poll failed to point out the unprecedented use of a filibuster to block nominees who have majority support while they forwarded the Democratic talking point that ‘the Senate has confirmed 35 federal appeals court judges nominated by Bush’ and painted rules changes as an effort ‘to make it easier for the Republicans to confirm Bush’s judicial nominees,’ not as a way to overcome Democratic obstructionism.”

Phony poll II

“‘Filibuster Rule Change Opposed’ is the headline of the lead story in [yesterday’s] Washington Post,” JamesTaranto notes at www.opinionjournal.com.

“The paper reports on a poll of 1,007 ‘randomly selected adults,’” Mr. Taranto said, adding that the relevant questions are No. 34 and No. 36:

34. The Senate has confirmed 35 federal appeals court judges nominated by Bush, while Senate Democrats have blocked 10 others. Do you think the Senate Democrats are right to block these nominations? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?

Result: Right 48 percent (22 percent strongly, 26 percent somewhat), wrong 36 percent (17 percent strongly, 19 percent somewhat).

36. Would you support or oppose changing Senate rules to make it easier for the Republicans to confirm Bush’s judicial nominees?

Results: Support 26 percent, oppose 66 percent.

Mr. Taranto comments: “Read these questions carefully and you’ll see that the Post’s headline is false. The poll not only doesn’t use the word filibuster; it doesn’t even describe the procedure. The way the question is worded, the Democrats could have ‘blocked’ the nominations by the normal method of voting them down — and there is no reason to think that ‘randomly selected adults’ would have been paying enough attention to know the difference. (Tellingly, the poll asks how closely participants have been following the Tom DeLay kerfuffle — only 36 percent say even ‘somewhat’ closely — but does not ask the same question about the judge issue.)

“The introduction to the question should have been worded: ‘… Senate Democrats have used a procedure called the filibuster to block a vote on 10 others.’ As it is, this poll is either a very sloppy bit of work or a deliberate attempt to mislead the Post’s readers — including members of the U.S. Senate.”

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