You mean just because someone thinks the questions were bad, all the idiots in the poll are now geniuses?

Actually it is the fact that the answers that would register as a correct according to the poll were either incorrect, or were only acceptable if the respondent viewed the issue from a conservative perspective. You can ask a question to which the answer can be consistent with specific sets of assumptions but has no clear answer. The poll in question is hardly different from a Hindu polling Christians on their knowledge by asking respondents, "how many gods are there." "see Christians are all stupid and uninformed because they got the number of gods question wrong!"

The poll's only value is to show that people that voted for Obama have a left or center-left perspective (well, duh).

PacManDreaming: all the idiots in the poll are now geniuses?

No it only means they didn't watch FOX News or read the National Review.

TFA is talking about the 512 persons who answered the telephone poll, not the 12 rocket scientists interviewed in the video that Ziegler also put on Youtube.

I was unaware that Biden had been cleared of the plagiarism charges. Goes to show how well informed by the media I was.

RobsterCraw:

The poll's only value is to show that people that voted for Obama have a left or center-left perspective (well, duh).

It's scary that people don't understand how loaded the questions were, or how incorrect many of the "correct" answers were. It's like... rain on your wedding day or something.

PacManDreaming: You mean just because someone thinks the questions were bad, all the idiots in the poll are now geniuses?

Basically the correct interpretation of the information that is available about this poll is that it does not serve to indicate the magnitude of the intelligence or how informed the voters were at all. As dumb as most of the respondents must have been (just based on probabilities of the general populous) and as smart as some of the others may have been, the poll was ineffective at making the desired distinction.

Wait...you mean this poll of Obama voters wasn't compared with a demographically similar group of McCain voters, who were asked the exact same questions? Wow...color me shocked. Someone needs to take my Methods course.

PacManDreaming: You mean just because someone thinks the questions were bad, all the idiots in the poll are now geniuses?

A few years ago I was asked to participate in a poll about America's involvement in the Vietnam War. I said right off that there was no such thing as a Vietnam "war".

Because of that response I was put down as totally clueless about a major world event that happened within my lifetime.

The questions matter.

You'd think the fact that Obama did so much better in traditionally Republican areas, including damn near carrying Georgia and getting an electoral vote in Nebraska, would put to rest this right wing canard that he was swept into office on a wave of dumbasses coming out to vote for someone they thought would give them shiat (which has a strong element of race baiting, of course.)

But I guess not.

Here's a question for the McCain supporters.

Q: Who said: "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country"?

A. John McCain
B. Barack Obama
C. Cindy McCain
D. Michelle Obama

more spin...... keep telling yourself "All is well."

dahmers love zombie: Someone needs to take my Methods course.

Oh, so much THIS it hurts.

/in a good way
//our mistake is we are assuming we are getting journalism
///journalism doesn't attract eyeballs (which, in turn, are $$$); instead most of this is sensationalistic hype tripe

RobsterCraw: Basically the correct interpretation of the information that is available about this poll is that it does not serve to indicate the magnitude of the intelligence or how informed the voters were at all. As dumb as most of the respondents must have been (just based on probabilities of the general populous) and as smart as some of the others may have been, the poll was ineffective at making the desired distinction.

You mean...you can make polls come out the way you want them to? I'm shocked that some pollsters would do such a thing.

dahmers love zombie: Wait...you mean this poll of Obama voters wasn't compared with a demographically similar group of McCain voters, who were asked the exact same questions?

They couldn't find the trailer park.

People who lack even the most basic critical thinking skills are so easy to fool that it's not even sporting.

This certainly applies to the twelve factually challenged suckers in the video, but at least as much to every nitwit who is unable to even ask meaningful questions about the many, many ways Zeigler twisted and distorted his "study."

Until thinking is valued more than believing, and the skills to do so are taught to everyone at an early age, we will continue to spiral down the stupid hole.

/Dooooooooooooooooomed!!!

RobsterCraw: The poll's only value is to show that people that voted for Obama have a left or center-left perspective (well, duh).

Our President has an approval rating of roughly 30% or so. Is 70% of America comprised of commie libruls?

Mugato: RobsterCraw: The poll's only value is to show that people that voted for Obama have a left or center-left perspective (well, duh).

Our President has an approval rating of roughly 30% or so. Is 70% of America comprised of commie libruls?

You don't have to be left leaning to be displeased with Bush. I imagine any fiscal conservative or conservative realist to be generally displeased with Bush, or believers in neo-classical or monetarist economics. Libertarians should be so pissed by now that they're gnawing on their arms. Non of these are lefty categories, each one would disapprove of Bush.

RobsterCraw: Libertarians should be so pissed by now that they're gnawing on their arms.

Come on. Libertarians are always pissed off about something.

incendi: I was unaware that Biden had been cleared of the plagiarism charges. Goes to show how well informed by the media I was.

Joe Biden quit the 1988 campaign because he was caught plagiarizing speeches from Neil Kinnock, JFK, RFK, and Hubert Humphrey. He was not cleared on any of those charges.

SkinnyHead: incendi: I was unaware that Biden had been cleared of the plagiarism charges. Goes to show how well informed by the media I was.

Joe Biden quit the 1988 campaign because he was caught plagiarizing speeches from Neil Kinnock, JFK, RFK, and Hubert Humphrey. He was not cleared on any of those charges.

Yeah no, He was look it up.

The idea that media bias was at play because the media talked about things that made McCain look bad that happened that day, while not talking about things that made Obama look bad that happened 20 years ago is ridiculous on its face.

If the survey is asking about William Ayers, it should also ask about the Keating Five and McCain cheating on his first wife. I would expect that most voters wouldn't know about that, either.

Barbigazi: SkinnyHead: incendi: I was unaware that Biden had been cleared of the plagiarism charges. Goes to show how well informed by the media I was.

Joe Biden quit the 1988 campaign because he was caught plagiarizing speeches from Neil Kinnock, JFK, RFK, and Hubert Humphrey. He was not cleared on any of those charges.

Yeah no, He was look it up.

I looked it up here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rkoqglq9dU
And here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIaALKHVrAA

How was he cleared of those charges?

SkinnyHead: How was he cleared of those charges?

Exactly what charges was he brought up on in a court of law, Mr. GED in law?

Fewer than half the questions in that poll could be unambiguously and correctly answered with the name of a candidate or a party.

Several of the questions seemed to assume as facts what were easily and long-since disproven talking points.

(earlier thread)

Zogby is a tool and his polls should never be considered for anything more than creating a headline:
"OMG JOHNRMCCAINS R AHEAD BY 3 POINT"¹

_{1: In Zogby poll, which doesn't count.}

What the hell charges could you possibly be brought up on? He was forced to retake the class and his previous grade of F was taken off his record upon retaking the class in law school.

And, there is more than ample evidence that he cited the Kinnock speech several times on the campaign trail, but he made the mistake of not citing it the one time he brought his stump speech out on national TV.

I'm still unsure what "charges" he had to be cleared of though.

Notice that there was no equivalent Republican voter poll in which they say that Obama was a secret muslim terrorist or that the current financial crisis was caused by to much regulation.

SkinnyHead:
How was he cleared of those charges?

He had previously cited him.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200808230003

Yes, he was cleared.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE1DD1230F93AA15756C0A96F94826 0

Ah, this graph is so handy...

Because People in power are Stupid: Notice that there was no equivalent Republican voter poll in which they say that Obama was a secret muslim terrorist or that the current financial crisis was caused by to much regulation.

Don't be silly. All Republicans have a PHD in Economics. I'd go so far to say that I've never heard a Republican lie, misstate something, or in any way say something that wasn't factually correct.

If you are in need of more information about Barack Obama and his secret Muslim tendencies, I'll refer you here: Link (new window)

sloppy shoes: Because People in power are Stupid: Notice that there was no equivalent Republican voter poll in which they say that Obama was a secret muslim terrorist or that the current financial crisis was caused by to much regulation.

Don't be silly. All Republicans have a PHD in Economics. I'd go so far to say that I've never heard a Republican lie, misstate something, or in any way say something that wasn't factually correct.

If you are in need of more information about Barack Obama and his secret Muslim tendencies, I'll refer you here: Link (new window)

Gracias! That Conservapedia link is so wonderfully nutty, it deserves a medal. But really most of the articles are seriously full of comic win.

BuckTurgidson: Fewer than half the questions in that poll could be unambiguously and correctly answered with the name of a candidate or a party.

Several of the questions seemed to assume as facts what were easily and long-since disproven talking points.

(earlier thread)

And if you correctly said that the question wasn't true because you knew that it's a right wing bullshiat talking point, you were counted as being "wrong".

So given the construction of the poll, actually being informed about politics and knowing the truth would get you labeled as "uniformed".

Pheh. Zogby didn't start running from it until someone called Ziegler on the amount of bullshiat it contained.

Luneward: Pheh. Zogby didn't start running from it until someone called Ziegler on the amount of bullshiat it contained.

He probably got paid triple his normal fee knowing people will forget about it in 2-4 years.

Notice that it was done immediately after the election when no one really cared anymore. There had already been polls about Ayers that were scientific, as I recall.

This is what I don't get about Zogby in all this. They could have claimed from the get-go about this poll that the questions were supplied to them by the idiot Ziegler and any conclusions drawn from it all are his and his alone. Instead they defended what Ziegler was doing and so sullied their own name.

T.M.S.:
A few years ago I was asked to participate in a poll about America's involvement in the Vietnam War. I said right off that there was no such thing as a Vietnam "war".

Because of that response I was put down as totally clueless about a major world event that happened within my lifetime.

The questions matter.


Ugh. I suppose you're one of Those People who freak out when somebody says the US a democracy, too.

You must be real fun at parties.


_{/rolls eyes.}

Howard Stern did a great poll in Harlem on how uninformed the Obama voters were/are.


Link (new window)

audio only with F-bombs

With Zogby's admission that the poll was "not their finest hour", right wing talk radio hosts will now:

a) Recognize this and publicly denounce Ziegler's tactics
b) Drop it into the memoryhole and move on to the next manufactured distraction

So let me get this straight: If respondents in 2008 are more aware of the cost of Sarah Palin's wardrobe (happened in 2008) or that McCain didn't know how many houses he owns (also happened in 2008) than they are about Biden's plagiarism (happened in 1988) or Obama's afternoon tea with Bill Ayers (1998 or thereabouts), or even Obama's removal of some of his opponents from the ballot due to their violating some statute or other (also the late 90's or thereabouts), that somehow means the media was biased towards Obama?

The media gives more coverage to current events, not relatively obscure crap that happened 1-2 decades ago.

The more accurate questions for comparison would have been:

Which candidate cheated on their spouse after he/she became disabled in a car accident?

Which candidate placed at the very bottom of their graduating class?

Which candidate took 5 years and 6 different schools to get a journalism degree?

etc, etc.

I know more about the run-up to the Iraq war than I do about Iran-contra, does that mean the media has a pro-Reagan bias?

Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy.

Stunning Break with Last Eight Years.

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.
Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama's appearance on CBS' "Sixty Minutes" on Sunday witnessed the president-elect's unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.
But Mr. Obama's decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring.
According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota, some Americans might find it "alienating" to have a President who speaks English as if it were his first language.
"Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement," says Mr. Logsdon. "If he keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an elitist."
The historian said that if Mr. Obama insists on using complete sentences in his speeches, the public may find itself saying, "Okay, subject, predicate, subject predicate - we get it, stop showing off."
The President-elect's stubborn insistence on using complete sentences has already attracted a rebuke from one of his harshest critics, Gov. Sarah Palin ofAlaska.
"Talking with complete sentences there and also too talking in a way that ordinary Americans like Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder can't really do there, I think needing to do that isn't tapping into what Americans are needing also," she said.

I_Approve_Of_This_Message: With Zogby's admission that the poll was "not their finest hour", right wing talk radio hosts will now:

a) Recognize this and publicly denounce Ziegler's tactics
b) Drop it into the memoryhole and move on to the next manufactured distraction

c) Accuse the MSM of threatening to 'blacklist' Zogby, thereby coercing him into renouncing the ONE poll in the last 6 months (besides most polls the week after the RNC) that has told the TRUTH.

wejash: sloppy shoes: Because People in power are Stupid: Notice that there was no equivalent Republican voter poll in which they say that Obama was a secret muslim terrorist or that the current financial crisis was caused by to much regulation.

Don't be silly. All Republicans have a PHD in Economics. I'd go so far to say that I've never heard a Republican lie, misstate something, or in any way say something that wasn't factually correct.

If you are in need of more information about Barack Obama and his secret Muslim tendencies, I'll refer you here: Link (new window)

Gracias! That Conservapedia link is so wonderfully nutty, it deserves a medal. But really most of the articles are seriously full of comic win.

Wow. It really is impossible to spoof the extreme. That he pronounces "Pakistan" correctly is proof that he's really a Muslim.

Or this gem: Obama has chosen the Secret Service code name "Renegade". "Renegade" conventionally describes someone who goes against normal conventions of behavior, but its first usage was to describe someone who has turned from their religion. It is a word derived from the Spanish renegado, meaning "Christian turned Muslim."

/Do they actually believe that?

biglot: Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy.

Sounds like an Onion article? Am I right?

PacManDreaming: You mean just because someone thinks the questions were bad, all the idiots in the poll are now geniuses?

Seems to me the only idiot was the one who commissioned the poll.

The questions had no relevance to policy or agenda, but on GOP smears that didn't work in the traditional media.

rynthetyn: Or this gem: Obama has chosen the Secret Service code name "Renegade". "Renegade" conventionally describes someone who goes against normal conventions of behavior, but its first usage was to describe someone who has turned from their religion. It is a word derived from the Spanish renegado, meaning "Christian turned Muslim."

/Do they actually believe that?

Wait, wouldn't renegade be from the Latin renegare (to deny)? No, couldn't be...Conservapedia wouldn't be wrong.

/actually I could be wrong, know nothing about etymology
//does know latin

Phil Herup: Howard Stern did a great poll in Harlem on how uninformed the Obama voters were/are.


Link (new window)

audio only with F-bombs


Both sides have uninformed supporters, you for example.

As a supporter of Sarah Palin, why should we ever give a damn what you think?

Zarkin Frood: Ah, this graph is so handy...

A agree with that chart, and I'm a right wingnut that thinks democrats eat puppies.

attackingpencil: rynthetyn: Or this gem: Obama has chosen the Secret Service code name "Renegade". "Renegade" conventionally describes someone who goes against normal conventions of behavior, but its first usage was to describe someone who has turned from their religion. It is a word derived from the Spanish renegado, meaning "Christian turned Muslim."

/Do they actually believe that?

Wait, wouldn't renegade be from the Latin renegare (to deny)? No, couldn't be...Conservapedia wouldn't be wrong.

/actually I could be wrong, know nothing about etymology
//does know latin

Actually, technically their definition of "renegado" is correct in the context of the history of the Christians and Moors in Spain.

Freepers get riled up over nonsense, and call people who don't pay attention to their whining over that nonsense "ignorant".

Politics in America is never really about liberal versus conservative. It's about intelligent versus stupid, and this time, stupid lost.

Edsel: Actually, technically their definition of "renegado" is correct in the context of the history of the Christians and Moors in Spain.

Yeah, but wouldn't renegado have come from the Latin?

/may be talking out of my butt

Edsel:
Wait, wouldn't renegade be from the Latin renegare (to deny)? No, couldn't be...Conservapedia wouldn't be wrong.

/actually I could be wrong, know nothing about etymology
//does know latin

Actually, technically their definition of "renegado" is correct in the context of the history of the Christians and Moors in Spain.

More importantly, who was smart enough to know that but dumb enough to actually edit Conservapedia?