Reflections From a Murky Pond

Microsoft fired up it’s Bing Pulse tool for the second year in order to record real-time audience sentiment during Obama’s fifth SOTU speech. The online voting tool allowed viewers to share their opinions about the speech using a smartphone, PC or tablet.

This year, Microsoft is added some new functions to the tool, including an annotated graph feature that allowed viewers to click on spikes and/or dips in the real-time graphs to see the issues being addressed during the speech that have prompted major reactions.

Last years SOTU Bing Pulse registered 12.9 million votes, according to Microsoft, and this year’s should have been at least as popular so these are the broadest political polls in existence at this time. The re results are also quite interesting.

Speechcrafting

Firstly, I have to give credit where credit is due. Whatever team of writers developed Obama’s 2014 SOTU speech did a very credible job.  The Overall Intensity Graph show a solid curve of interest that builds well, peaks, and drops off at the end, indicating a good denouement. The pacing of the peaks and valleys of engagement also shows a good pace to the speech.

A Telling Response

The listeners’ responses, broken out by political beliefs, is very telling indeed. There’s a huge and stark disparity between how Democrats viewed Obama’s speech and how both Republicans and Independents did so. It’s quite a dramatic difference.

Democrats held largely uniformly positive views of each of Obama’s talking points, only dipping below the 50% mark on the issues of the War on Terror and continuing to support Israel.  They’ve approval didn’t waver much throughout the speech either, showing far less mean difference in approval rating and engagement from one talking to point to the next than either Republicans or Independents. For the most part, however, while differing in amplitude, Democrats showed the same peaks and valleys of approval as both Republicans and Independents.

Republicans and Independents conversely were, by and large, quite disapproving  of Obama’s talking points during his speech, rising above 50% only when it came to the War on Terror and providing medical benefits to veterans. They were, in fact, both more disapproving of it than the Democrats were approving of it.

One point to make specific note of is that Republicans and Independents responded to the talking points in Obama’s 2014 SOTU speech almost identically. There was almost no statistical variation between them, whereas both differed greatly from the Democrats’ responses.

Women’s Needs

Interestingly, despite the constant contention that women have different needs and priorities than men, the responses and engagement of the respective genders was, talking point by talking point, almost identical. This largely held true even on those parts of Obama’s speech which would normally be considered “women’s issues.”

Tags: America | Bing | Bing Pulse | Conservatives | Democrats | Independents | Liberals | Men | Obama | Politics | Polls & Surveys | Republicans | SOTU | Technology | Women

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 30th, 2014 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Politics, Technology. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

In the wake of the Tuscon,AZ massacre CBS conducted a poll of Americans’ attitudes to many things vaguely related to the incident including anti-government violence. Most such polls are poorly crafted and conducted bu CBS’ was, in some of its questions, far more execrable than most – though the responses were even worse.

We’ve reached a sad nadir as a culture.

Amid other things the CBS poll in question found the following:

Whether politics played a factor in these shootings or not, few Americans think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government.  Three in four think it is never justified, similar to the percentage that said so last April.

Is Violent Action Against the Government Ever Justified?

	Now	20-Apr-2010
Justified	16%	16%
Not Justified	76%	79%

The anti-American, Leftist propaganda outlet, Daily Kos was not – for rationales that largely escape me – satisfied with this already pathetic result. Supposedly the filth, kos emailed CBS to get the party affiliation breakdown of the results.

What? 16 percent of Americans think anti-government violence is justified? I emailed CBS and asked for the partisan breakdowns of that question. Here they are:

Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?

Republican	28% yes	64% no
Democrat	11% yes	81% no
Independent	11% yes	81% no

Note, this poll was conducted after the Giffords shooting. Yet while a tiny (though still too large) fringe of Democrats and Independents approve of anti-government violence (likely the Alex Jones crowd), over a quarter of Republicans do so.

28 percent.

I wonder where that 28 percent gets their news. (Not really, it’s pretty obvious.)

NOTE: Markos Moulitsas aka kos is not the sort of creature whose accuracy or veracity can ever be trusted, but there seems little enough reason for it to lie to overtly about this data. I believe it’s safe enough to use these figures for now.

A Bad Question

The most egregious error or wrongdoing that CBS committed in their poll was asking an overly simplistic question with only two diametrically opposed answers, yes or no, allowed. Such XOR or binary toggle questions are almost always meant to illicit polarizing results or inflame an issue as opposed to gathering useful data.

This is made worse by asking such a question during a time of national shock and/or outrage since the results will likely be skewed and answers that are perceived as being unpopular will only lead to largely unwarranted vilification by various ideologues and agendists.

Is Violent Action Against the Government Ever Justified?

That’s just too wildly simplistic of a question to be asked in a yes or no format. Doing so ignores any form of context or circumstance and, hence, serves no valid purpose.

There’s also the issue of the missing 8% of the responses from the poll and the missing 5% of responses from the April 20, 2010 poll.

A Worse Result

Even given how piss-poor the question that CBS asked was, the results were appalling. That only 16% of respondents said that violent against the government is ever justified does not bode well for the future of our country or the liberty of our children.

In the best of a bad set of cases this is an example of sloppy thinking and answering a question that was not actually asked. If this is true, the respondents just weren’t hearing or reading the word “ever” and were thinking in terms of right then and in the current circumstances.

I have a hard time, however, in believing that a strong, much less overwhelming majority of those respondents fell into that particular cognitive trap. That strongly implies that the American people doomed to be subjected to tyranny by a government drunk on power – not today and likely not too soon, but in the not-terribly-distant future.

~*~

Like it or not, America was founded by violent actions against the government; we’d still be a British Crown Colony otherwise. The turbulent and often deplorable history of Man also indicates that it’s more than likely that America will someday have to be reborn through violent actions against the government.

To say or, worse, believe that violent actions against the government are never justified is tantamount to accepting the shackles of servitude. Worse even, when later generations seek to cast off those shackles, and sooner or later they will, a far greater level of violence will be required.

Does that mean that it isn’t or shouldn’t be a horrific thought? No. I, for one, would consider it quite horrific and hope that our politicians find the thought even more so and refrain from doing that which would cause such reprisals. Yet, horrid or not, anyone who loves America and the liberties we enjoy within it must accept that violence will one day be necessary for their continuance.

Tags: America | Democrats | Freedom | Independents | Insurrection | Kos | Liberals | Media Bias | Moulitsas | Politics | Polls & Surveys | Republicans | Revolution | Society | Tyranny | Violence | War

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

It is, according to the Gregorian calendar, the year 2010 AD and, in America, there’s a more than decent chance that it will be a year of revolution. It looks to be a year when the Liberals’, led by President Obama and his cultists along with Senator Harry Reid and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, quasi-Socialist revolution ends in defeat. It looks to be a year when an American revolution takes place once again.

America Rising: An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians

The video letter to the Democrats (on YouTube and Dailymotion) included this succinct and eloquent explanation for the video:

We elected you on a promise of hope and change. You’ve disappointed us. In 2010, we are taking the country back. Blue collar democrats, independents, and conservatives. We love our country. We are proud of our founders. And we will fight to protect our traditions. We don’t want your revolution.

— Buckrush

Is the above an example of careful reasoning? No, not by a long shot. It’s gut-felt anger, bitterness, and the feeling of being betrayed. It’s “street politics” and it’s how regimes and societies are lastingly changed.

The elections in 2010 – and later, in 2012 – are going to be truly revolutionary if things continue as they are going. A growing – as of January 5, 2009 – number of people who voted for Obama’s “Change” are not pleased with what he has done with the power they granted him, and they certainly are horrified at how the Liberals in Congress, led by Pelosi and Reid have twisted the supposed “mandate” they had been given.

America is rising and, by that, I mean the average American, long ignored as safely domesticated, is rising. There’s a revolution coming and I, for one, I’m glad to see it happen no matter how it turns out in the end because it’s far past time for Americans to take their government, their society, and their country back.

H/T to PA – Pundits, where I found this video letter.

Tags: 2010 Elections | America | Congress | Conservatives | Freedom | Independents | Liberals | Obama | Pelosi | Politics | Reid | Revolution | Socialism | Tyranny | US House of Representives | US Senate

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 6:51 am and is filed under 2010 Election, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Over the last year – especially during the 2008 Presidential Elections – I’ve gotten weary of analyzing, normalizing, and aggregating disparate opinion polls in order to derive some semblance of accurate numbers. Fortunately none of us has to do that anymore on a regular basis. Pollster.com, by The National Journal, actually aggregates the results of all the major polls and surveys and presents them in a combined view that includes composite results and individual poll results.

I’ve decided to – in the wake of the recent flurry of articles about President Obama’s historical low approval rating – to start with that. Below is the aggregated national approval rating for President Obama. It’s an embedded flash application and so should reflect the most current polls and ratings at any given time.

President Obama’s Overall Approval Rating

President Obama’s Aggregated Overall Approval Rating

To provide a better break-down of the support for- and approval of President Obama I’ve also included three (3) separate limited polls: one showing Democrat approval of President Obama, one showing Republican approval of President Obama, and one showing Independent approval of President Obama.

President Obama’s Approval Rating Among Democrats

President Obama’s Aggregated Approval Rating Among Democrats

President Obama’s Approval Rating Among Republicans

President Obama’s Aggregated Approval Rating Among Republicans

President Obama’s Approval Rating Among Independents

President Obama’s Aggregated Approval Rating Among Independents

I hope everyone finds these aggregated poll results of President Obama’s approval rating useful. I believe that they show a better picture of the real situation than any one poll would do.

Tags: Democrats | Independents | Obama | Politics | Polls & Surveys | Republicans

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.