PrintJune 29, 2009
'Blacks in survey say race relations no better with Obama'
Advice: Don't put your faith in polls, but don't ignore them either. Historically, pollsters contradict each other and continually favor Democrats. Nor do I believe in polls that show massive liberal leads and speedily close in just before an election. My take? In two words: unscientific spin.
But what can we learn from the numbers game? For starters, if partisan pollsters can't hide cracks, then we know the Democrats are in trouble. The Obama-first network CNN states:
Ninety-six percent of African-Americans approve of how Obama is handling his presidency, according to a CNN/Essence Magazine/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Thursday.
To be clear, though, CNN acknowledges:
The poll had a sampling error on these questions of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.
Interestingly enough, CNN doesn't clearly define or confirm what it means to be "African-American," but rest assured that their definitions favor their preferred political outcomes.
Nor does the Obama-first network tell us that it buries many of Obama's mistakes. Question: If I told Joe for months that Stevie Wonder's cat looks beautiful, and then polled Joe on Stevie Wonder's cat, guess what?
Further, CNN's three-day poll interviewed "505 African-Americans" and "501 whites," or the only two races in the United States. And strikingly it reveals:
During the 2008 election, 38 percent of blacks surveyed thought racial discrimination was a serious problem. In the new survey, 55 percent of blacks surveyed believed it was a serious problem, which is about the same level as it was in 2000.
By the way, CNN's headline is intentionally misleading. The African-Americans in their interviews didn't reveal that race relations are "no better with Obama" but significantly worse. (Unholy translation: race relations were better under Bush.)
I suspect the number is higher than 55 percent of "blacks" and that the pollsters purposefully ignored the so-called Latnio voting bloc because they were scared of what they'd find.
During 2008, the mainstream media lost what little respect it inherited. A segment of the population, for example, was led to believe that a vote for Obama was a vote for a heavenly post-racial America.
More, a number of voters were led to believe that a vote for McCain was a vote for racism. So, undoubtedly, some voters are dupes. In 2009, race in America is a more divisive issue, even according to CNN's handpicked races.
