Bad News Isn’t Fun But It Doesn't Last Forever

The late, great political strategist Lee Atwater once said (so I hear) something to this effect: You know it’s a good day for your side when you enjoy reading the news and you know it’s a bad day when you can hardly stand to pick up the paper. Actually, it’s my understanding that he was talking about my old stomping grounds at the Hotline when he made those comments but I think it can be applied to the media as a whole.

Supporters of President Bush haven’t been enjoying much of their news reading and watching of late and oftentimes the easy way to respond is to blame the news. It seems to me that there is a legitimate argument about the coverage of certain issues – the war in Iraq being a major one – where a case can be made about its fairness. We’ve taken that one on to some degree and will continue to follow the discussion in the future. Other bad news, like the indictment of Scooter Libby, is what it is.

We’ve got something a little in-between today, both having to do in some way with the latest CBS News poll. First, take last night’s “Evening News” story. The Media Research Center seems to take issue with how the story by correspondent John Roberts portrayed some of the poll’s results. While no specific complaint is made, the MRC’s “Cyberalert” today points out that the piece included a side-by-side comparison between President Bush and former President Richard Nixon. Here’s the line from Roberts:

“The plunge in poll numbers is another dose of bad news for a White House mired in it. The only recent President lower at this point in their second term was Richard Nixon. What's behind the slide: 2,000 war dead in Iraq, an indictment in the CIA leak, the aborted Harriet Miers nomination, the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina.”

I spoke with CBS producer Max McClellan who produced the package and asked about it. He pointed out that the comparison came straight out of the CBS News poll released yesterday. Indeed, it did. The poll compared the job approval ratings for second-term presidents at this particular moment in their presidencies and showed that, by far, Presidents Bush and Nixon’s ratings were significantly lower than Presidents Eisenhower, Reagan or Clinton. Kathy Francovic, Director of Surveys for CBS News, notes that CBS, and other media pollsters, do such comparisons frequently. They also compare high and low marks for various presidents, although usually toward the end of their terms.

The package also highlighted a New York Times op-ed written by former Reagan Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein and included comments from him on how the Bush administration can overcome its recent troubles. That this president has been through a rough patch of late, I think, is not an overstatement. Was the “Evening News” somehow suggesting Presidents Bush and Nixon are alike? Only in their approval ratings at this point of their presidencies, and Francovic is quick to note that other presidents – including Reagan and Clinton – hit numbers equally as low at some point as well. Supporters of this president can look at those examples and believe that, sooner or later, they’ll enjoy the news again.

Secondly, one of those age-old polling questions has raised its head again – weighting. The latest poll, which has President Bush’s approval rating at an all-time low of 35%, is being questioned because of its party ID makeup. Here’s what Real Clear Politics points out:

Now for the numbers behind the numbers. Take a look at the composition of the respondents:

Total Respondents (Unweighted) = 936
Republicans = 259 (27.67%)
Democrats = 326 (34.83%)
Independents = 351 (37.5%)

Now look at the weighted sample:
Republicans: 223 (23.80%)
Democrats: 326 (34.79%)
Independents: 388 (41.4%)
The result is a 35% job approval for the president, which is roughly 4-8 points lower than the other polls out right now.

The point made – that the poll included about 35% Democrats, 41% Independents and 24% Republicans – leads one to think that the numbers are negatively skewed against the president. The issue of weighting in polling is much discussed and debated, and there is plenty out there to consider. Mystery Pollster has some of the most in-depth discussion on all aspects of polling (you can find out all about weighting here). The issue of weighting is, at its root, about adjusting data to reflect the most accurate picture possible. There are plenty of arguments about how to do that, but for our purposes here, let’s stick to how CBS News does it.

A CBS polling primer answers the question of whether “our respondents look like the American public”:

At the end of our surveys, we find sometimes that we have questioned too many people from one group or another. Older people, for example, tend to be at home to answer the phone more than younger people, so there is often a greater percentage of older people in our surveys than exists in the American public.

When that happens, we take great pains to adjust our data so that it accurately reflects the whole population. That process is called “weighting.” We make sure that our final figures match U.S. Census Bureau breakdowns on age, sex, race, education, and region of the country. We also “weight” to adjust for the fact that people who share a phone with others have less chance to be contacted than people who live alone and have their own phones, and that households with more than one telephone number have more chances to be called than households with only one phone number.

So when we add up all the answers to our questions, we know that no one’s opinion counts for more than it should. When you see one of our poll results on TV or in the newspaper, you know that it does not show the opinions of only one or two groups of Americans.

So how does a poll end up being comprised of 35% Democrats, 41% Independents and 24% Republicans? Frankovic explains that there is no adjusting for party identification in the CBS News polls and that the weighting described above accounts for the changes in the party ID. Frankovic notes: “The people who tend to be under-represented in a sample … tend to be younger and tend to be more minorities. So that by assuring that the sample looks like the country, you’re probably going to almost always increase the number of Democrats.” In short, when the sample is adjusted to match the Census Bureau data, the party ID percentages change.

Now, I’m the first one to distrust polls, regardless of who’s conducted them. For one thing, they’re too complicated for me to fully understand. For another thing, I like to believe that we can’t simply take a snapshot of how a diverse nation feels about complicated issues even though that’s how the media presents them. But learning how they’re conducted is worthwhile and I suggest you read more about that.

The CBS News poll has Bush at an all-time low, but others are finding the same. An ABC News poll found him at a new low of 39% -- slightly higher than the CBS poll, but well within both polls' margins for error.