I fell into a discussion today about polls and how that data is presented. If ever there were tools whose use were for nefarious and fallicious useage it is the political poll. Why? It is the appearance of unanimous or near unanimous consent to a topic presented as the majority thought. It is a complex series of questions, statistics, and presentation that makes the poll so usefull to the propagandist and researcher alike. They are both useless and usefull all in the same package. It is a shame and a sham that data produced by polls and used by politician and demigogue alike are used to make political decisions or produce the illusion of national will.

A cleverness of word can turn on the result to the desire of the pollster. That is why not every poll is made alike. That is also why polls from Rasmussen or Gallup have the reputation of reliability over an internet poll hosted by yahoo for example. Yet, even here it cannot be denied that the pollster holds all the cards and can attain a pre-desired result from the questioning.

A poll in particular that I decided to look into claimed a 60% response in the negative in support of increaseing troop strength in Iraq. A story using this poll used the numbers to advocate a decline support for President Bush and his plan to add 21,000 more soldiers to "stablize" the situation in Iraq. Someone commenting to a Town Hall collumn stated that 2/3rds of the country supported an immediate withdrawl of troops and did not support sending more. I questioned the person on the source for his claim. A poll conducted by Gallup was the source for the story.

Here is the poll:

As you may know, the Bush administration has begun to significantly increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to help stabilize the situation there.  Do you favor or oppose this?

A fair question, no?

Let's look at what goes on in a poll and where those numbers we see flashed about casually come from.

First we have the question. There are several trigger words in this question calculated to bring a response, Bush, significantly, and stablize. I'd say this is meant not to find out what the average person might think but to elicit an emotional response either pro or con. What if instead of Bush the name Petreas where used? General Petreas is also asking for 21,000 more troops for accomplishing his given mission. What if it where new Defense Secretary Gates? These are names that do not elicit such hatred or support as does Bush.

Secondly, significantly carries with it a meaning of either out of proportion or a negative increase. We've seen the news stories that talk of significant rises in unemployment or rise in temperature. We use this term when trying to sway someone against something else we do not personally want.

Thirdly, the word stabilize, something Bush has used himself is negatively connotated and means that the situation is unstable, a state of affiars that is only supported in our media and ignores other happenings in the country that would speak against it.

It is difficult to treat with this subject and not be drawn by the allure of tipping the scales one way or the other. But, I'm not convnced this poll wasn't slanted to the "popular" over the real.

A Fox News poll was a bit more revealing in both real data and questioning. The break down of partisan support was given plus the numbers of people contacted. This information was missing from the Gallup data and though one last peice of information is still missing, that of the area of the country and socio-economic status of the respondants was not given.

The question Fox News asked was:

Do you support or oppose sending additional troops to Iraq to help stabilize the country?

Though  the word "stabilize" was used here as well the question lacked the other trigger words associated with the other poll question. The result deviated slightly from the Gallup poll in overall percentages but what is more refealing about this poll was the ideological data presented. Democrats as a whole weighed heavily