The Case Against Dumb, Click-Bait Polls

[DonViejo]

Asawin Suebsaeng

Reuters thought it would be fun to compare President Obama’s approval rating against some fictional presidents. They were wrong.

On Monday, the news agency released a new Reuters/Ipsos poll demonstrating how President Obama’s poll numbers paled in comparison to those of make-believe characters.

“Whether it’s the earnest Josiah Bartlet from The West Wing or the manipulative Frank Underwood in House of Cards, Americans prefer television presidents to their real-life POTUS, President Barack “No Drama” Obama,” the accompanying Reuters article reads.

The survey stacked Obama’s favorability numbers against those of liberal-teddy-bear Bartlet, the morally bankrupt Underwood, Battlestar Galactica’s Laura Roslin, Scandal’s Fitzgerald Grant, and 24’s David Palmer. (Dennis Haysbert, who played the tough, African-American Democratic commander-in-chief Palmer, has argued that his character actually helped lay the groundwork for public acceptance of a black president in real-world USA.)

“A news organization spent good money that it could have spent on reporting conducting this poll (instead),” Mother Jones editor Nick Baumann responded indignantly to the Reuters-Ipsos poll on Monday.

These characters are fictional, and even the morally ambiguous or Machiavellian ones are written to be sympathetic or alluring for the sake of compelling TV. There are many obvious reasons as to why this polling is outstandingly useless. For one, President Bartlet never invaded a country you didn’t want him to attack, nor did he ever impose tax hikes you weren’t fond of. In fact, he didn’t invade any countries, or raise any taxes, because he is president only in a land of make believe.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/24/the-case-against-dumb-click-bait-polls.html

[DJ13]

1. This should be a poll

Oh, wait.....