[lbo-talk] Pew on the net & politics

[Gar Lipow]

On 11/9/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Nov 9, 2006, at 7:19 PM, Gar Lipow wrote:
>
> > How reliable is Pew, anyway? I see them contradict Gallup and Harris
> > on a lot issues. Someone told me that Pew is the "gold standard" of
> > polls - that when they conflict with other pollsters, I should believe
> > them. True? False?
>
> How do they contradict Gallup & Harris? (Harris does a lot of web
> polls, so I'm not sure how reliable they are.) Pew is a serious
> outfit, and they often do interesting analyses. Don't know about the
> gold standard though; all the majors do good work, within their
> conceptual limits of course.
>
> Doug
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>

Global warming is one example. Gallup and Harris tend to show U.S.
majorities accepting that global warming is human caused, and and a
serious problem we should take action against. Pew tends to show that
U.S. majorities are skeptical that global warming is human caused, and
a serious problem we should take action against. The Pew result not
only contradicts Gallup and Harris; it contradicts itself. But on the
other hand that kind of self-contradictory opinion holding is not
exactly unknown - but I'd like to figure out how to weight this.
Global warming is not the only issue I've seen this happen on, but it
is of special interest to me.

Here are some recent polls on the subject:

http://www.eesi.org/briefings/2006/Energy&Climate/4.20.06_Climate_Polling/ClimatePollingFactSheet_4.20.06.pdf

You will  notice that they all show people recognizing the problem as
a serious one. The Gallup poll (the only one that asked the question)
show 58% recognizing it as human caused. I can show you other data
going back to show that this is a long time trend.

Gallup and Harris both ask about it annually.

Pew also investigates the same question regularly

Their July survey showed that about 4 in 10 people believe global
warming ins human caused.
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=280

Again this seems to generally be the results Pew gets on this issue.

So when it is Pew vs. everybody else, who do you believe?