Doug,
I'm a fan of your Left Business Observer reports--I've heard you on KPFA for many years. I think your e-mail below is a bit officious and sensationalistic in its own right. I believe that we've been back and forth in the past on some of this, but I welcome it in any case. For starters I do believe that our web site completely explains our methodology. I assume you have looked at it throroughly so please give me particulars of what you think we've left out. I certainly will try and address any particulars you raise or any ommissions we've made.
Your comments about what mainstream pollsters believe about non-responders misses our point. Of course they know it's a problem but they keep on spinning their margin of error message. Any good statistics professor will confirm that it's a ruse. It isn't a margin of error that makes any sense given the non-responder rate. It's like testing the ferocity of a lion by petting the sheep in the next cage. Also, if you've read our article in Z mag or in Censored 2000 you will know that Gallup compounds the problem by weighting minority votes to account for the even worse non-responder problem among ethnic minorities. As we've pointed out there is just a fairly good chance that they are magnifying the problem by doing that. Our viewpoint is that public opinion polling is a fraud. We don't say that ours is less fraudulent, just that we can at least counteract the bias inherent in surveying people on exactly what the media tells them and what the media wants to hear back from them. You can not refute the now multiply repeated findings that we first published that only people who believe the old goverment media hype on Saddam and 9/11 and Saddam and Al Qaeda and Saddam and WMD supported the war and the occupation. Why are we (and PIPA) the only ones screaming about that? I can tell you why. Because it wouldn't be good for business for Gallup and the rest of the crowd to show that they are working for and supporting a propaganda machine.
On the WTO which I acknowledge as an area of your expertise, we'd appreciate any suggestions for a future question or two on the wto / GATT/ CAFTA etc. Please contribute.
On the question about Bush and impeachment you are both right and wrong in my view. We did not ask straight out if people favor impeachment. Nor did we say straight out that Bush lied. What we did do is present two facts and then offered people a conclusion (based on the facts Bush mislead, regardless of whether he lied or not) and asked their opinion as to whether misleadership that leads to war is grounds for impeachment. If you think that is improper then I am afraid you do not understand how the media cast on all public discourse about such policies is biased to assure that people never consider such questions. Our "slant" is no more fraudulent than theirs or that of polls that mimic the "frame of reference" that the Media and government set on such things. It is just different. We choose to associate dots a and d where they insist that dot a can only be associated with dot b and c. There is no way to undo that a-> b-> c-> logic (or propganda theme) without postulating an alternative logical framework. As far as your concerns that we have "spun" the results, I think you are off base. I do not know if 39% of the public thinks what Bush did is grounds for impeachment because of our small numbers and the non-responder problem. We have tried to urge others with money and resources to repeat this with large numbers. We were even asked to redo it by Democrats.com but we were not able to do it. However, even if only 30% of the public thinks Bush has done someting that is grounds for impeachment, to not make that into a major news story is outrageous. You should be more angry at the censorship. For you to argue that 42% who thought it not grounds for impeachment means something is to miss the whole point of this amazing finding. If 30% or 39% favor impeachment it means that the entire media structure of the U.S. has successfully distorted our perceptions of public anger around the war and thus pacified the opposition. 30% of the public is tens of millions of people and that aint the left, it's a potentially organizable force for fundamental structural changes in the U.S. If you don't see that I wonder what your frame of reference is as to what info is more or less important. We've never said that we are more objective than the corporate polls or media. We do believe we are more independent and less beholden to the market. But all efforts in the social sciences (some would even include the natural sciences) are fundamentally subjective based upon the perspective of the viewer. The difference is that we aren't trying to hide anything which is why our mission clearly states we're trying to show how corporate media biases create public opinion.
best wishes,
marc
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Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 14:15:29 -0500 To: msapir at retropoll.org From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> Subject: honesty Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
While I'm sympathetic with your mission, several things bother me about what I see on your website. Actually one is something I don't see - a detailed discussion of your methodology. But the other is how vigorously the press release spins the results. Below is a copy of something I just posted to the listserv I run, lbo-talk.
Also, I think your Q&A on the WTO is way too one-dimensional <http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031027&s=henwood>, <http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031229&s=henwood>.
>overqualified wrote:
>
>>On this site U find alternative polls and a critique of usual opinion polls
>>(like the factual one that about 70% of interviewed in any
>>poll are "not respondent").
>>Highly recommended.
>>http://www.retropoll.org/
>
>On looking at the actual question compared to the press release,
>this gang spins a lot more than Gallup.
>
>Press release <http://www.retropoll.org/press_release_poll03.htm>:
>-------------
>
>>At least one in three Americans believe that George W. Bush should
>>face impeachment for misleading the public and Congress about
>>Saddam's weapons of mass destruction to create support for war on
>>Iraq. This is a new finding from a national survey conducted by the
>>Retro Poll organization between October 29 and November 12. The
>>actual proportion supporting impeachment was 40% but with a margin
>>of error of plus or minus 8%, 1 in 3 remains a conservative
>>population estimate. "We are seeing a rising tide of public anger
>>that no one is paying attention to", said Dr. Marc Sapir, Retro
>>Poll's Director.
>
>Question <http://www.retropoll.org/results_poll_03.htm>:
>--------
>
>>31. President Bush claimed that the US had to invade Iraq because
>>Iraq had nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. None has been
>>found. Do you think that misleading the U.S. public and Congress in
>>order to take the country into war is grounds for impeachment?
>>
>>Yes (39.9%), No (42.5%), Don't Know (17.6%).
>
>The press release would lead you to believe the question was direct:
>"Do you think President Bush should be impeached for misleading the
>public about WMDs in Iraq?" But the actual question is in two parts.
>People could think that Bush really believed his own propaganda, and
>so would not be eligible for impeachment under these criteria. The
>release also doesn't say that the "No" vote was larger than the
>"Yes" vote (though with a sample of 150, the margin is way smaller
>than the margin of error).
>
>Just because something is spun the way you like doesn't make it more
>"objective" than "corporate" polls (and, by the way, Gallup is
>employee-owned).
>
>The non-response issue is very controversial in the public opinion
>world, and most honest pollsters are aware of the difficulties. So
>Retropoll isn't accurately reporting on the state of mainstream
>pollster thinking either.
>
>Doug