Poll deflates "Obama's Katrina" meme

[JohnWxy]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/05/polling_obamas_handling_of_the.html

Yes, it's Rasmussen, but this is worth a look, since it's the first effort I've seen to gauge the public's perception of Obama's handling of the Gulf spill:

How do you rate President Obama's response to the major oil leak off Lousiana's coast -- excellent, good, fair or poor?

20% Excellent

23% Good

28% Fair

26% Poor

Given that barely more than a fourth say Obama's response was "poor," it would be hard to argue that the "Obama's Katrina" meme has gained any traction. That may explain why Rasmussen buried that finding and didn't trumpet it in any headline.

(more)

[Captain Hilts]

1. This is 50-50. He has little margin for error here. As it goes on more economic effects will

be felt.

[Drunken Irishman]

2. 50-50?

Where are you getting those numbers?

It seems only 26% of Americans think he's doing a poor job (probably the same 26% who'd say he was doing a bad job regardless of what he was doing...).

Unless you're clumping fair with poor, which isn't right. Fair is tolerably good. Not great. Not bad.

I'd clump that with excellent and good before putting it with poor.

[Captain Hilts]

4. 'un'favorable responses outnumber the positive. Right now, intensity favors the negative slightly.

[Drunken Irishman]

5. That's wrong...

Because fair is not an unfavorable response. If the weather is fair, it's not bad. If you're in fair health, you're not dying and you're stable.

Fair is, above anything else, average.

So if 20% say he's doing an excellent job and 23% say he's doing a good job, that means 43% say he's doing an excellent or good job. 26% say he's doing a poor job. The rest say his job is fair - not bad, not great.

So yeah, it's not 50-50. More Americans think he's doing a good job than think he's not doing a good job (43 to 26).

[Captain Hilts]

9. Pipsqueak, I was in political polling for 10 years. 'Fair' is NOT considered a positive response. n

[Drunken Irishman]

10. That doesn't change a damn thing...

And you know this! :)

Fair is not bad. Look up the definition of fair and you'll see exactly what I mean. I don't care what poll speak is. To the general public, fair is probably 'average' and average is not bad. It's not good. It's average.

So yeah. My point stands. 43% say he's doing at least good. Only 26% say he's doing poor. The other percent thinks he's doing fair. Not fairly poor. Not fairly good. Just fair. Average. Nothing spectacular. Nothing disastrous.

The absolute definition of fair!

[Fruittree]

11. I agree with you...

Also, at times when I'm not very informed about a topic and asked to give an opinion or rate it in some way - I'll answer "fair" or "o.k."..

[Drunken Irishman]

12. Right...

I get pollspeak might suggest fair is not positive. However, to the general public, fair means okay.

"The weather is fair..."

If you're listing fair, it's probably going to be an answer for those who don't fully know or think he's doing an average job.

Is average good? Absolutely not. Is it bad? Hardly.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. I have to agree with Drunken Irishman and Fruittree

If you were calling 'fair' as 'negative', then you were misusing the English language. Unless you prefaced your questions with "'fair' here means 'not very well'", then the people you were asking would have been using their normal definitions. And if you did say something like that, I'd ask you how often people said to you "that's not what 'fair' means to me".

[Captain Hilts]

14. In a spectrum that includes four responses - two positive and two negative, it's

considered by respondents as slightly negative. It is used this way in general conversation as well.

Opinion is split pretty evenly here - as it is on the president in general approval. So, these numbers reflect what the general population thinks about him, but suggests he's lost a wee bit of some independents on this issue.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. Not in dictionaries it isn't

10 a : sufficient but not ample : adequate <a fair understanding of the work> b : moderately numerous, large, or significant <takes a fair amount of time>

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fair

If you, as a political pollster, expected your interviewees to respond on the number and order of the answers you suggest, then you should have used numbers. That's what they are there for. Sometimes, pollsters mix up the order of the choices, so that there isn't an order bias. Are you saying that an interviewee should add up the number of choices given, work out where the median is, and then base their answer on that?

Words, on the other hand, have meanings. And dictionaries do their best to record the meanings people understand for words. 'Fair', in all its other meanings, is a positive word.

In my general conversation, 'fair' is slightly positive. And in the conversation of others on this thread too.

Perhaps we've found a significant problem in polling here. Are pollsters out of touch with typical people? Do they have specialised meanings for words, and don't realise that others haven't picked up on their new meanings?

[Captain Hilts]

16. It is, in part, a function of being one of four choices. If there were five, it would be seen

as more strongly a negative response. This is not a new interpretation of this language or how it's used, but rather, goes back decades.

In reviews, such as for restaurants, 'fair' is also not considered a positive response.

This usage is not unique to polling.

But, again, the numbers here follow those of the president's polling numbers, in general. The president's numbers, at this point in his tenure, have no relevance to his likelihood of being re-elected anyway.

But it's WRONG to see these numbers as being "positive," when they are strongly neutral.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. You're worrying me now

You really are saying that pollsters don't pay attention to the meanings of the words in the choices they offer. Clearly, your 'decades-old' interpretation of language hasn't made it into any dictionaries, but you feel justified in thinking that normal people would use this undocumented meaning, rather than with the common usage.

If this is a typical attitude among pollsters, they're screwing up their own results.

[Captain Hilts]

19. 'Fair' has a tepid connotation in our language. It's not 'positive'. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. I've already given you one definition

Here's another:

4 moderately good.
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/fair_1?view=uk

It's positive. Just not very much, that's all. It is not 'negative', nor 'unfavourable'.

[emulatorloo]

21. Um. It means "OK" He is doing an OK job.

It isn't horrible, it isn't great. It is "OK"

[elocs]

3. Interesting how there is always that right around 25% for things.

The 25% who backed Bush no matter what is the same 25% that can never admit that Obama does anything well.

Also interesting is this DU thread from this morning: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8389947
which shows that 25% would never support torture to gain important information from a suspected terrorist. This is obviously the opposite 25% from the bush supporters.

Seems like both sides have their own 25 percenters.

[pinboy3niner]

6. Good observation

The 25 percenters have an automatic, knee-jerk, partisan response. Some probably know better, but hope to influence polls in a way that is unfavorable or damaging to the opposition.

[Fearless]

7. I'd be interested in seeing the poll after the slick reaches shore

And actually affects people at large. Katrina wouldn't have mattered had it stayed mostly out to sea. I don't wish him ill, actually I'd rather him get off his ass on this one, but I digress. This poll is comparing apples and oranges.

[Drunken Irishman]

8. I hear ya'...

I'm sure all Obama does every day is sit around the Oval Office playing video games and watching ESPN.

[Fearless]

22. In this case...

The response so far has been far more equivalent to that than holding BP responsible for its actions. I don't like it any more than you do. But it's the truth. And we need to fix it.

[unblock]

17. katrina was not an isolate incident, it crystalized shrub's reputation

before katrina hit, shrub had already established a reputation for letting crass and petty partisan politics completely drive all decisions. katrina merely drove this point home because it was just SO OBVIOUS that he did the wrong thing, and the stories about how they wanted democrats to relocate from new orleans to texas so as to make lousiana more reliably red at the expense of human suffering cemented his reputation as an insensititive partisan shit of the worst order.

whatever obama's faults are, i don't see the bp oilruption as clarifying his reputation in any particular way.