There sure have been a lot of polls lately. The one that got everyone’s interest, of course, was the recent national poll saying that nearly 1 in 4 Americans believe that President Obama is a Muslim. Whenever I read a statistic like that, I can’t help but wonder about the context and the subtext.
The context is important. The way the question is presented can have a heavy influence on the answer. Consider the following question: “Is a potato a vegetable?” The correct answer is obviously, “yes”. But what if I were to spend a minute discussing my diet and watching my carbs and trying to make good food choices before asking the question? Most people would suddenly deny that a potato is a vegetable, instead putting it into the ‘carbohydrate’ category.
The subtext may not change the answer, but it can certainly influence the interpretation.
I wonder how many of those Americans think that he’s just an out and out Muslim (which is just wrong) as opposed to thinking that he’s a closet Muslim bent on destroying America’s Christian values (which is an unproven conspiracy theory). The woefully uninformed and the dangerously suspicious give exactly the same answer, but with a very different meaning.
I saw another local poll in which 18% of respondents said that they were not influenced by negative campaign ads. There are three possible reasons that someone might put themselves into the ‘not influenced’ group: You think you’re above being influenced, you don’t pay attention, or you just don’t care. That nearly one in five of my neighbors falls into one of these three categories is a frightening prospect.
Lastly, a recent USA Today poll reported that 42% of Americans consider the television to be “a necessity of life”. I’m sure right now there’s a meeting going on in the White House basement concerning the government’s responsibility to provide a TV for every illegal immigrant in the US. It’s in the room right next to Obama’s secret underground Mosque.
