Trying to decipher the Chronicle's Texas Poll story
Today's Chronicle has a story on the latest Texas Poll results. The story, by Don Jordan, reports on how Texans responded to questions regarding terrorism and the Iraq war. Unfortunately, the story left me with a couple of nagging questions.
But first, here's some background on the Texas Poll: it is conducted quarterly by Scripps Howard out of its Austin bureau, and is available to subscribing news organizations which can report the poll's results. However, the internals of each poll are not available to the general public, except for whatever particulars a news outlet might provide within the context of a story. (I learned this last November when I spoke to Ty Meighan, the Scripps Howard Austin Bureau chief who is in charge of the Texas Poll. I had emailed several Chronicle reporters, inquiring about the poll, and could not get a response, but Mr. Meighan was gracious enough to take my call and answer some questions.)
Today's story is headlined, "Poll: War support shrinking in Texas," and here are the first two paragraphs of Jordan's story:
A shrinking majority of Texans believe the war in Iraq was justified even though the United States has uncovered no weapons of mass destruction it claimed Saddam Hussein had.
Support of the war has dropped from 74 percent in the spring to 56 percent now, according to a quarterly Scripps Research Center poll released today.
Don't you love the first paragraph? There's just no accounting for the common sense of a shrinking majority of Texans, is there?
In the second paragraph Jordan says "support of the war has dropped from 74 percent in the spring to 56 percent." Which spring? Spring 2004? That got my curiosity going, since I don't remember the media reporting such high support for the Iraq war at any time last year, so I did a little Google search and found this story from March 2004 with Texas Poll results:
While 59 percent of those surveyed believe that Bush was justified in launching the war on March 20, the finding reflects a 13 percent drop over the past nine months.
Okay, so in March 2004, 59 percent of respondents approved of President Bush launching the war in Iraq. Is that different from support of the war, like Jordan wrote? And it's not 74 percent, so maybe March isn't considered to be in the spring.
Next I found a couple of references to the May 2004 Texas Poll. First is a short story by the Chronicle's Polly Ross Hughes from May 19, 2004, now in archives:
While half said they approve of the president's handling of the war in Iraq, 48 percent said they disapproved.
She says half, and of course, half doesn't come close to 74 percent. Also, she refers to the President's handling of the war in Iraq, not the President's launching the war, or a general support of the war.
Then there is a Dallas Morning News story from last September that makes this reference to the May 2004 Texas Poll:
In May, a similar poll of 1,000 Texans found 62 percent agreed with President Bush's decision to launch the war. The summer result was the lowest recorded since the war began in March 2003.
That story says 62 percent and it refers to the president's decision to launch the war.
So where did Jordan get 74 percent? (I did send him an email, asking these questions. If I hear back from him, I will add an update.)
Another problem with the story is that without seeing the questions, we cannot determine what exactly was asked. Was the question, "Do you support the President's handling of the war in Iraq?" Or, "Do you support the President launching the war in Iraq?" Or, "Do you support the war in Iraq?" Those are three very different questions and if we can't see exactly what question was asked, how do we know what Jordan is comparing when he says support has dropped from 74 percent to 56 percent?
Another note: included with Jordan's story today, both online and in the paper, there are four Texas Poll questions in a sidebar. Jordan wrote in his second paragraph that 56% of respondents support the war, but none of the questions in the sidebar appears to match that. This one is the closest:
In light of developments since the war began, do you believe it was a mistake for the U.S. to send troops to Iraq?
• Yes: 42%
• No: 53%
• Don't know/no answer: 5%
That's a pretty loaded question and it doesn't seem to fit the support the war point. Plus the percentage is wrong. So I have to wonder why the question that seems to form the basis for this Chronicle story isn't one of those listed in the sidebar.
Of course, if there is an explanation to clear all this up, Jordan can always answer my email.
UPDATE (02-23-05): A little something has appeared in corrections:
•Support for the Iraq war among Texans has dropped from 74 percent in the spring of 2003 to 56 percent now. A story on Page A19 Saturday was incorrect.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 02/19/05 08:58 PM | Print |
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