Thursday, July 15, 2010

68% of Americans think too much money is spent on foreign aid and 59% want it cut.

2WESar04josh

Substitute foreign aid for unemployment benefits and The West Wing for real life.

In one of the episodes I talk about a lot, the staff is down one vote on Foreign aid which prompts everyone to start looking at polls.  Josh Lyman, the deputy chief of staff remarks "Of course foreign aid polls badly, the people it's helping aren't the ones answering the phones...."

Now cut to real life and this HuffPo article:

“In a Bloomberg survey, 70 percent of voters said reducing unemployment is more important than reducing the deficit. But only 47 percent said Congress should reauthorize extended benefits, which in some states provided the unemployed with up to 99 weeks of checks.”

So here, when the people receiving aid are answering the phones, the poll still makes no sense. Sure, you can make the argument that these respondents don’t see the connection between extending unemployment benefits and reducing unemployment but then you have to ask why that was not addressed in the poll.

You can see similar polls on immigration where most Americans are opposed to amnesty but also support a path to legal citizenship. Should polls come with a glossary?

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