We Favor Higher Taxes? How Polls Can Be Abused By the Press

There is a AP article which is in the Union Newspaper on January 27, 2011, HERE.  The article is a fine example of how the press manipulates words and results and cherry picks outcomes without letting the readers have all the facts. We see this all the time when the lamestream media wants to pass along propaganda from biased polling agencies and make them news stories.  We call these kinds of polls, "push polls".  They are used to assist the respondent to come to a pre-ordained conclusion by the way the question is structured.  This PPIC poll is one of these "push polls".  The poll is HERE.

When you see who was polled you can also see the bias. 

The desired outcome is clear to me.  The pollsters want to support increased taxes and the removal of the 2/3rd requirement (question #41) to raise taxes.  The questions are very leading and when you read them you can see where they want to go.  I thought Question #2 was perhaps the most telling.  39% did not even know anything about Jerry Brown's budget strategy yet the rest of the questions were about that strategy.  It seems ridiculous to me that someone who is ignorant abut the strategy would then be considered eligible to be included in the results for the rest of the questions!  But that is only me.


 Go to page 32 to see how they broke out the political persuasions of the respondents.  Also, only 69% said they were sure they were registered and the polls was heavy on liberals. 32% were liberals, about 11% higher than the national polls and when the Republicans were asked if they were strong republicans 42% said they were not, (question 47a).  I came away with an overall view the poll respondents were AGAINST tax increases based on how the questions were asked.  But when you read the AP story my guess it is the result of the pollsters press release and the AP bias since it is a very liberal organization.

Please read the whole poll from page one to the end and then make your own determination.