On ridiculous polls, and how they tell me nothing....
I read a poll this week that was quite possibly one of the more ridiculous I've ever come across. CNN was the culprit, and you can read it here.
For those feeling lazy, here's the gist: people like past presidents more now than when they were in office....specifically Carter and George HW Bush.
Now when I first read through the article, I wasn't immediately struck by how useless this information was. I thought it was mildly interesting that Carter went from a 34% approval rating in the last December of his presidency and now 64% of people think he did a good job.
Then it struck me how old I was.
The poll states it asked about 1,000 adults their approval ratings of Carter and the elder Bush. At 27, I just happen to be, rather firmly, an adult. And yet my mother probably didn't yet know she was pregnant with me when Carter left office, and Reagan was quite settled in to the Oval Office by the time I was born. Nowhere in the article does it state this was corrected for. What makes it even worse is doing the math out one more step....if a 27 year old wasn't born when Carter left office, then essentially no one under 30 was speaking in full sentences at that point. Those born in 1970 or later where probably wholly unaware of anything political at the time, which brings us to no one under 40 can give a real opinion that says anything. In fact, if we give people a lot of credit and say they start having a political clue at 15, that puts us back to 1965 as the year of birth for those who could give a real opinion....and they're all turning 44 this year. Now, while they may have cut out those under 30 in this poll, I feel they probably did not cut out anyone under 45, especially not without saying so. So we have a pretty decently large group of people commenting on the presidency of someone they have no clue about. Of course they are going to like him. It's easy to like president's when all you know is that they work on Habitat for Humanity. Even if you know that he gave away the Panama Canal (as my grandmother reminded me frequently, why this political issue still had her riled up after all these years I've never quite grasped) you will never quite get the significance, unless you happened to study not so ancient history or you lived through it. As school teachers tend to hate teaching "history" that happened in their lifetime, and no one will put the Carter administration in "current events", we are pretty much stuck with a hazy view of something that happened right before we were born, and are left to draw our own impressions from what we here in every day conversation.
In summary, I know more about Lincoln than Carter.
To note though, I don't like Carter. My grandmother hates him, and I've never seen her hate anyone. More impressively though, my father-in-law hates him. Good old Fred is the most hardcore patriotic Democrat I have ever met in my life, and he said Jimmy Carter was the only president who made him consider resigning from the state department....well, until George W. Bush. Anyway, when Fred says Jimmy Carter made him vote Republican, I know it was bad. Really bad.
For those feeling lazy, here's the gist: people like past presidents more now than when they were in office....specifically Carter and George HW Bush.
Now when I first read through the article, I wasn't immediately struck by how useless this information was. I thought it was mildly interesting that Carter went from a 34% approval rating in the last December of his presidency and now 64% of people think he did a good job.
Then it struck me how old I was.
The poll states it asked about 1,000 adults their approval ratings of Carter and the elder Bush. At 27, I just happen to be, rather firmly, an adult. And yet my mother probably didn't yet know she was pregnant with me when Carter left office, and Reagan was quite settled in to the Oval Office by the time I was born. Nowhere in the article does it state this was corrected for. What makes it even worse is doing the math out one more step....if a 27 year old wasn't born when Carter left office, then essentially no one under 30 was speaking in full sentences at that point. Those born in 1970 or later where probably wholly unaware of anything political at the time, which brings us to no one under 40 can give a real opinion that says anything. In fact, if we give people a lot of credit and say they start having a political clue at 15, that puts us back to 1965 as the year of birth for those who could give a real opinion....and they're all turning 44 this year. Now, while they may have cut out those under 30 in this poll, I feel they probably did not cut out anyone under 45, especially not without saying so. So we have a pretty decently large group of people commenting on the presidency of someone they have no clue about. Of course they are going to like him. It's easy to like president's when all you know is that they work on Habitat for Humanity. Even if you know that he gave away the Panama Canal (as my grandmother reminded me frequently, why this political issue still had her riled up after all these years I've never quite grasped) you will never quite get the significance, unless you happened to study not so ancient history or you lived through it. As school teachers tend to hate teaching "history" that happened in their lifetime, and no one will put the Carter administration in "current events", we are pretty much stuck with a hazy view of something that happened right before we were born, and are left to draw our own impressions from what we here in every day conversation.
In summary, I know more about Lincoln than Carter.
To note though, I don't like Carter. My grandmother hates him, and I've never seen her hate anyone. More impressively though, my father-in-law hates him. Good old Fred is the most hardcore patriotic Democrat I have ever met in my life, and he said Jimmy Carter was the only president who made him consider resigning from the state department....well, until George W. Bush. Anyway, when Fred says Jimmy Carter made him vote Republican, I know it was bad. Really bad.
posted by bs king at 6:32 AM
5 Comments:
Good analysis. Part of it is they have all there pollsters out there and you can only take so many "if the 2012 presidential primary were held today" polls in 2009. So, they have to make stuff up. And asking people to comment on things they have no clue about is fair game for pollsters.
My recollection of Jimmy Carter? I tried very hard to like him, but double digit inflation and unemployment will dampen the spirits in a hurry. He was a disaster. Some presidents make better ex-presidents.
And, BTW, your grandmother had good company in her opinion. Your grandfather (her husband) used to go around muttering "he gave away the canal" all the time. That is one of my lasting memories of him. As for Fred, I'd love to get his take on Jimmy some time.
Your grandparents' Carter-bashing sounds like something out of a Thurber story. I like it.
Additional statistical quirk: A large percentage of people who were over 55 when Carter left office are dead now and so can't be polled, except perhaps in Chicago.
I think it takes two generations before you start getting full objectivity on an historical figure.
I loved Jimmy Carter and his speeches on human rights. I loved how he witnessed about Jesus Christ to other world leaders.
Today, how I wish he would shut up for he has shriveled into a spiteful, mean, old man. In hindsight I see how disasterous his polices have been. But frankly, I think giving away the Panama Canal was exactly the right thing to do. Perhaps some of you can enlighten me at to why it was wrong.
I am still in Rwanda. Next week I begin teaching American English to kids at Rango school, likely for two weeks. It depends on whether or not the shipment of books arrives while I am here and whether or not I can afford to stay in Kigali to organize them into libraries.
There is another sub-class in that older group who aren't quite dead yet. Some of us lived through all of it, but can't remember any of it. I'd forgotten all about that canal thing. I remember Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey fondly, but can't remember why...and I'm the only person I know who still thinks we won the war in Vietnam...right??
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