Polling and Obama: Reducing His Influence

According to a recent Gallup poll, President Obama’s “favorable” ratings had dropped ten points, from 63 percent to 53 percent, over a thirty-day period, and according to the July 30 Rasmussen Report Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, which claims to conduct its research only among “likely voters,” rather than among “adults,” as Gallup does, Obama’s “favorables” had dropped below 50 percent for the first time in his presidency, to 48 percent.

Don’t be alarmed, “Obama-lovers.” The same Gallup poll points out that, even though the president's support among whites had slipped to 47 percent, his national support among blacks still stood at an amazing, and, for the life of me, inexplicable, 95 percent.

If you believe the “pollsters” – the persons or firms that construct the research questionnaires, ensure that the phone calls are made to a “representative sample” of the larger population, analyze the results and write the final report, a political poll is an accurate reflection of the opinions held by the masses.

Perhaps, at one point, that used to be true. It certainly is not the case today.

With the constant barrage of 24-hour, “all news, all-the-time” radio, cable, and Internet postings, a poll simply reflects the opinions that are given to the masses, or force-fed to them, over time, by those who control media outlets.

Most of us are exposed to these things so frequently that, before long, we even begin to accept them as fact and begin to repeat them, ourselves, to anyone who brings up the topics. For example, you probably recognize these story lines…Nigeria is a nation of fundamentally unethical, politically unstable people, who happen to have oil reserves; Rev. Jeremiah Wright is a “black racist;” Sarah Palin was “in over her head” as a legitimate Vice Presidential candidate; Walter Cronkite was “the most trusted person in America;” and Barry Bonds was not the best player in the history of baseball, as his statistics clearly bear out. Instead he was, allegedly, a “steroid-abusing athletic cheater.” After awhile, it becomes hard to know which of these things are your actual beliefs and which ones were simply fed and repeated to you by CNN, ABC News and the New York Times.

In the case of a political issue or an elected official, once the basic storyline is established, a poll is eventually conducted. As part of that process, a group of “randomly selected” people are asked by an interviewer to respond to questions about the issue or person. Not surprisingly, the pollster usually finds that "public opinion" is, more often than not, in absolute lockstep with the tone and quality of coverage the media have provided about the subject, in the first place.

If the media have, previously, been largely and consistently favorable and supportive of a candidate, or an issue, chances are that the poll results will also be largely favorable. On the other hand, if the dominant quality of coverage has been consistently negative, one can project, with some confidence, that the poll results will be largely negative.

Hey, where else do average citizens get verifiable information with which to form opinions about Sarah Palin, Walter Cronkite, Barry Bonds or, even about Nigeria? Have they actually spoken to any of these people, or actually visited the country? I think not.

In essence, therefore, the media establish a specific image about the candidate through their news coverage, repeat and reinforce that perception, then, after a poll has been taken, that same media contingent feeds back to their audiences the “news” about the shifts in the candidate’s “approval ratings.”

None of this would matter very much if a poll were simply an isolated reflection of how people feel about an issue or person, or just a “political popularity contest.”

No, modern polls actually constitute a measure of a public official’s political capital. Whether or not a public official’s “favorables” are well above 50 percent determines whether phone calls are promptly returned, whether fund-raising checks are written, whether the candidate can drive bills through the legislative process, whether he/she has any real influence at international negotiating tables, or whether the opposition feels it can “get away” with open challenges to the public official’s agenda.

It is precisely within that context that the Gallup and Rasmussen polls are now being used to demonstrate, “objectively,” that the American people are no longer favorably impressed by Barack Obama.

No matter the recent turn of events, we have to admit that, up to about two months ago, Obama actually enjoyed a very close and supportive relationship with the media, beginning with the Iowa Caucuses during the Presidential Primary Elections. It appears that they simply liked his story, the one about the black guy with the white mother from Kansas, who went on to get a law degree from Harvard, better than they liked Clinton’s, better than they liked Edwards’, better than they liked McCain’s. After all, they had already done stories about white men running for president—for more than 200 years—and that story was starting to get “old,” even to them. They seemed to find Obama’s “cross-over appeal” more compelling and seemed to think it would be better for their own ratings

But that was then.

Now, it seems, major media are taking an entirely different approach to Barack Obama. All of a sudden, he's finding that he's getting strong “pushback” from reporters, at every turn. More and more, he’s getting stories about the ineffectiveness of the Stimulus Package, about his inability to reduce the country’s deficit, to "break the back" of the recession or to beat back the indigenous resistance in Afghanistan, the war he chose to expand.

Now, just like clockwork, after weeks and weeks of this pattern of coverage, we see a series of media-sponsored polls, all reflecting the after-effects of the new, more critical tone of news reporting about the Administration.

Predictably, the “voters” who are questioned in those polls are now feeding back the fact that Mr. Obama’s “favorables” have dropped significantly.

Surprise! Surprise!

The sad part of all of this, no matter how you actually feel about Mr. Obama, is that his “political currency” and effectiveness are being eroded, his ability to have real influence is being taken away. Even worse is that we may be tempted to believe that the new, less “favorable” opinions that we and other Americans are forming about Mr. Obama every day, are positions that we arrived at independently, as a result of our own thorough scrutiny of the political process.

As we watch the continuing devaluation of this elected official, we're going to have to be careful not to be caught up in opinions that are formed elsewhere, careful that we don't begin, even subconsciously, to accept them as our own. Remember how black voters became convinced that Obama was actually a viable presidential candidate only AFTER white Caucus attendees in Iowa said he was? We’re going to have to watch out for that phenomenon, now, as the mainstream media begin to move in the opposite direction.

As the insightful Jacques Ellul once wrote: “…the important thing is not to be able to read, but to understand what one reads, to reflect and judge what one reads…the vast majority of people, perhaps 90 percent, know how to read, but do not exercise their intelligence beyond this.”

Let’s remain alert, at the national, statewide, and local levels, to the potential to be misled against our own best political interests, by what seems to be a fair and objective, scientifically calibrated news-gathering process.



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