September 2013

I covered earlier the negative spin Gallup put on its recent Tea Party polling.  What showed a stable support/opposition over the last two years -- including a drop in opposition -- was spun as a negative only by comparison to three years ago. Gallup could have titled its report "No real change in Tea Party Support" or "Tea Party Support/Opposition Stable." Instead, Gallup put this spin on it:

That misleading spin has been picked up and run with across the media, which is trying to tie the supposed decline to Ted Cruz's rise since 2012. But there was no meaningful decline since 2012 -- just 2% within the poll's 3% margin of error.  Support is actually 1% higher than in 2011.  You have to go back three years to the 2010 mid-term pro-Republican wave election, when Tea Party support peaked briefly, to see a substantial decline.  But that substantial decline took place prior to the 2012 election, long before Cruz was in the Senate.

Even with that, over 1 in 5 Americans still support the Tea Party and half of Americans are neutral.  Considering the demonization of the Tea Party in the media and Washington, D.C., a stable support/opposition is pretty amazing. No one is interested in the details, it's just political gamesmanship. Here are 5 profoundly misleading headlines inspired by Gallup:

1.  The Week -- Why does everyone hate the Tea Party?

Really? 73% of people supporting or being neutral on the Tea Party means everyone hates the Tea Party?

 

2. Taylor Marsh - No One Supports the Tea Party Anymore:

Well, if by "no one" you mean over 1 in 5 Americans, slightly more than self-identify as liberal:

That's not the headline you will see, of course. Instead, Gallup headlines its story about its most recent polling to emphasize the negative about Tea Party support, Tea Party Support Dwindles to Near-Record Low.

But it you look at Gallups chart, it shows a 2% drop in support for the Tea Party in the past year and a 2% drop in opposition to the Tea Party, and both are near record lows.  There's only one brief time period when opposition to the Tea Party was significantly lower, but opposition now is right in the 25-29% range it's typically been in.  Tea Party support is significantly lower than three years ago, but about where it was two years ago.  So the drop took place two years ago, not recently as the Gallup headline (picked up in the mainstream media) would have you believe. Why highlight just the drop in support?  Because. Moreover, the percentage of people who consider themselves Tea Pary supporters is slightly larger than those who consider themselves liberal, as measured in Gallup's ideological self-identification survey from 2012. Considering the multi-year war on the Tea Party by Democrats, many Republicans, and the media, it is astounding that the Tea Party continues to stay more or less even in its support over the past two years.  A 2% drop is hardly meaningful, and could just be variations within the margin of error in the poll, which was +/- 3%. Also consider that half the electorate has no opinion one way or the other.  So put it another way, almost 3/4 of the American electorate is not opposed to the Tea Party! Think about it another way, if you were at a dinner table with four other people who represented the American electorate, one of the people at the table would be a Tea Party supporter.  And two others would have no opinion. Be afraid, be very afraid. Update: If Gallup wanted to be completely neutral, it could have written its headline as "Support and Opposition to Tea Party Stable." Instead, Gallup's anti-Tea Party spin is being picked up gladly at outlets such as TPM:

This is possibly the dumbest headline of all, from Taylor Marsh: