Poll Cats

Time-SRBI Poll Question: “Do you personally believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim or a Christian?” Pew Poll Question: “Now, thinking about Barack Obama's religious beliefs ... Do you happen to know what Barack Obama's religion is? Is he Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, or something else?" With differing polls suggesting differing statistics as to whether Barack Hussein Obama is or is not perceived by the American electorate as “being Muslim,” the August 20^th Washington Post asked: “Obama is a Muslim - 18%, 24% or ? A widely reported poll from the Pew Research Center pegs the number of Americans who believe President Obama is a Muslim at 18 percent. Matt Drudge and others prefer the ‘shock’ Time-SRBI poll showing 24 percent holding this false notion.”

How you ask a question often presupposes the answer or maximizes a particular response. Also, whom you ask can have an equal impact. For example, the Post notes, “Fully 44 percent of those who disapprove of the president in the Time-SRBI poll picked the Muslim option, far higher than the 30 percent of disapprovers who selected Muslim in the Pew poll.” So if you don’t like the guy, for whatever reason, you’re obviously more like to pick a label that makes him look less favorable, at least in the eyes of most Americans.

But in the world where we are experiencing what famous political scientist Samuel P Huntington called a “Clash of Civilizations,” where large segments of the Islamic world see the United States and the West as mortal enemies of Islam that need to be crushed, you’d think they would be happy with this “ambiguity” that so fascinates the American electorate. They’re not: Obama is the leader of the enemy, responsible for the killing of innocent Muslim civilians in Afghanistan and clearly not only not a Muslim, but no perception as a “friend to Islam” lingers notwithstanding an extended hand in a speech in Egypt made by the President early in his term of office. So Muslims clearly don’t think Obama is one of “them,” and anti-Obama elements in the U.S. think he is. No big surprise.

The context of where a poll is taken creates another set of prejudices says the Post: “Priming is a third potential source of variation. Briefly, the Time poll tackles the Islamic community center issue, whereas Pew focuses on religion more broadly. The mosque controversy likely primes partisanship, which in turn influences answers to the subsequent survey items.” I’m as guilty as the next guy in taking polls too seriously, but I am “strongly cautioned” these days to look behind the poll at all the variables that might influence a result. Framing questions and placing the questionnaires in the “right” place can color the results significantly. Playing with statistics is indeed an American past-time that requires a bit more scrutiny.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I always encourage looking behind labels, slogans and naked statistics.