Understanding the Polls

For John, BLUF:  Lies, damn lies, statistics.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Surveys are hard to write and hard to interpret.  At a meeting Friday morning a committee of pretty smart folks, and me, looked at a single word foil, questioned it, expanded it and then killed it.  We all bring our backgrounds and education to these issues.

Here Professor Ann Althouse inveighs against The New Republic for abusing statistics.  The TNR headline is "80 Percent of Conservatives Think the Poor 'Have It Easy.'"

Professor Althouse writes:

I really want to criticize The New Republic for it's disgusting, deceptive headline. The relevant question had this pairing:

Which of the following statements comes closest to your view?

Poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return

Poor people have hard lives because government benefits don't go far enough to help them live decently

I suspect most people would have trouble with both statements, but to say that your view comes closest to the first statement is not to say that you "think the poor 'have it easy.'" It's just to reveal that your tendency is to think the government's safety net is too big or too soft or perhaps that too many people are losing their incentive to strive because benefits create dependency.

Professor Althouse noted that in the Comments one Ignorance is Bliss noted:

There is actually a deeper methodological flaw to TNR's analysis.  The poll did not identify liberals and conservatives, then ask them this question, then report the results.  It used this question as part of the process of determining who was a liberal and who was a conservative.

Of course conservatives answered the way that they did, that was part of Pew's definition of a conservative.

Here are the responses to the question for the last 20 years, going back to the first year of the CLinton Administration.  This is PEW Question 25C.

	Poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return	Poor people have hard lives because government benefits don't go far enough to help them live decently	Both/Neither/ DK/Ref
Jan 23-Mar 16, 2014	44	47	9
Dec 3-8, 2013	43	43	14
May 1-5, 2013	45	44	11
Feb 22-Mar 14, 2011	41	47	12
January, 2008	34	52	14
December, 2005	35	51	14
September, 2005	38	51	11
December, 2004	34	52	14
June, 2003	34	55	11
August, 1999	45	42	13
June, 1997	45	42	13
October, 1996	46	40	14
October, 1995	54	36	10
April, 1995	52	39	9
October, 1994	48	41	11
July, 1994	53	39	9

Surprisingly, the lowest numbers for "Poor People Have It Easy" was during the Bush Administration.  The highest numbers tended to be during the Clinton Administration.  What does that tell us?

Hat tip to the Althouse blog.

Regards  —  Cliff