Latest Poll Results: 97% Oppose Bush’s War
By Lawrence Hagerty, December 19, 2001
Since we live in a country whose leaders
value opinion polls more than they value the will of the democratic
majority of voters, I thought it would be worthwhile to conduct
my own survey of public opinion to see if I could add something
of value to the national debate. Lacking the resources of
the corporate media giants, I had to improvise a new polling
technique. Instead of making phone calls to a thousand or
so well-selected households, as the professional polling outfits
do, I randomly polled some of my friends and associates. The
results were strikingly different from those you hear about
on television.
In crafting my poll I did my best to
follow the guidelines set out in a
recent survey that was conducted jointly by USA TODAY,
CNN, and the Gallup organization. In that poll questions were
asked of 1,019 adults and the pollsters reported they had
95% confidence in the results, within ± 3%. Based on the latest
U.S. census data, this means that they collected information
from 0.000004% of the population. I decided to take a somewhat
larger sampling and so I polled approximately 3% of my friends
and associates.
Like other polling professionals, I did
not allow my respondents to elaborate on their answers. They
were only allowed to answer “yes” or “no.” Here are the questions
I asked:
- Now that U.S. bombs have killed more innocent civilians
in Afghanistan than were killed here in the September 11th
attacks, should we shift from the “war-mode” to a “police-mode”
in our quest to exterminate the “evildoers?”
- Should we now begin to bomb the other 60 countries that
we suspect are harboring terrorists?
- Are you willing to surrender your personal privacy and
freedom of speech for the rest of your life in order to
support a war that we are told “will not end in our lifetimes?”
It should come as no surprise for you
to learn that every person to whom I posed those questions
answered “no” to all three. I have therefore concluded (with
95% confidence ± 3%) that 97% of my friends and associates
oppose a continuation of this war.
Now if you think my headline for this
story is misleading, you might want to look more closely at
the headline USA TODAY used in reporting one of their recent
polls. The headline read, “Poll finds strong support for expanding
terror war.” While this poll asked 24 questions, I could only
find two that even came close to addressing the issue of the
war on terrorism. They were:
- How satisfied are you with the amount of progress made
by the U.S. military in the war in Afghanistan? (92% satisfied)
- If the U.S. goes to war in Iraq, do you think it will
be as successful as the efforts in Afghanistan have been,
or not? (68% said “yes”)
From those two questions alone, USA TODAY
appears to have concluded that there is “strong support” for
expanding the “terror war.” The first three questions in that
poll focused on the Bush presidency (in response to one of
the questions, only 24% of those polled believe Bush won the
election “fair and square”). The other 19 questions dealt
mainly with various ways of bringing bin Laden to justice.
So what are we to make of all these polls?
My suggestion is that you only trust the polls you conduct
yourself. Ask your closest friends the questions I asked,
or make up your own. But the next time you read or hear a
headline about how many people are merrily riding along on
the U.S. war wagon, you might want to take it with a grain
of salt. As Arianna Huffington said in a recent editorial: “This willingness
to treat the numbers with a reverence ancient Romans reserved
for chicken entrails is standard operating procedure for both
pundits and politicians — and it often has disastrous consequences.”
Let us hope that Washington’s current
strategy of believing the results of dubious opinion polls
ends soon, before more innocent people are slaughtered.
(RIGHT
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