media's biased polling machine, The

Mobocracy: How The Media's Obsession With Polling Twists The News, Alters Elections, And Undermines Democracy. By Matthew Robinson. Forum: An imprint of Prima Publishing. 378 pages. $24.95

Early in 2001, a Newsweek national poll asked: "Do you think Congress should approve Bush's choice of John Ashcroft for attorney general, or reject Ashcroft as too far to the right on issues like abortion, drugs and gun control to be an effective attorney general?" Only 37% of the sample said yes, while 41 % were against confirmation.

"With that kind of wording," writes Matthew Robinson, "it's a wonder only 41 % opposed Ashcroft." Those distorted poll results were enough for other media outlets, picking up the Newsweek survey, to pronounce President Bush's nominee for attorney general an unpopular choice and give Ashcroft's Senate opponents political cover to vote against his confirmation.

That technique is part of the process described by Robinson in Mobocracy. Biased wording of questions combines with a distorted polling sample to undermine the entire democratic process. "At the same time that polling has metastasized," he writes, 11 voter disconnect has surged"-as evidenced by low voter turnout and distrust of government. "The likely effect of sample after sample will be to drain the health and vitality of the nation as Americans tune out."

Mobocracy is a serious, meticulously researched account of the causal relationship between polls and the decline of what used to be known as republican virtue Robinson cites The Federalist Papers especially James Madison, to demonstrate what the Founding Fathers conceived a the new nation's politics, compared to how the "proliferation of polls" has produced an "age of spin."

Rigging Polls Nothing New

Robinson, who is now managing editor of HUMAN EVENTS, wrote Mobocracy while on a year-long Phillips Foundation fellowship. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am a member of the foundation's board of directors that selected Robinson as a fellow for 1999). A writer and editor for Investor's Business Daily prior to his fellowship, Robinson comes from the new breed of conservative young journalists who mix scholarship with tenacious reporting.

Rigging polls is nothing new, and neither is reporting it. In mid- 1960, as a Wall Street Journal reporter, I wrote a frontpage article about how that year's presidential candidates distorted Polling to their own advantage-an account prompting candidate Richard M. Nixon to express his dissatisfaction with me to the Journal's brass (which reported the unsuccessful protest back to me). The deceptions of 42 years ago, however, were mild compared to what happens today.

In 1960, the news media did little formal polling, and surveys leaked by candidates in-an attempted influencing of public opinion were relatively harmless. The 21st Century world of Mobocracy is far more complicated and sinister.

Liberal Bias in Polls

The big liberal news media poll incessantly, not just during elections. "In the wake of an airline crash, school shooting or similar tragedy," Robinson writes, "polling is now one of the hallmarks of the media feeding frenzy. In this context polls make public opinion as much as they observe it." The supposedly "detached and objective" pollster "becomes part ot the political struggle."

The wording of the poll controls the outcome. A CBS News-New York Times poll Robinson sees the polls yielding "halfbaked opinions based on little more than momentary impressions." The propensity for manipulation was never greater than in the flawed debate over the impeachment of President Bill Clinton when he survived "almost solely due to his support in public opinion polls."

What is to be done? Robinson offers a laundry list of changes: End overnight polls, which are notoriously unreliable. Question only "likely" voters in polls. Use samples with a minimum of 1,000 voters. Release all information about surveys, including the exact wording of questions. Draft questions that precisely define terms (such as "voucher" in a school choice survey).

Don't count on any of the Robinson reforms being implemented. Even if they were, a poll would still be a poll. "Polls are not and can never be a surrogate for debate," Robinson writes.

Indeed, Matthew Robinson sees the republican ideal as envisioned by James Madison undermined by the sophisticated appeal to the "mob" through the symbiotic relationship between politicians, the media and pollsters: "The noblest expression of liberty and self-rule isn't found in the questions written by a pollster working in New York for a newspaper story about a Washington controversy and then tested on a busy and uninformed citizen. Liberty values action and rewards individual decisions in every life where the margin of error is contained by personal responsibility and government is limited to allow the full expression of every belief and private opinion."

Mr. Novak is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Completing the Revolution.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Feb 25, 2002
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