Great: Robert Gibbs Announces New White House War, This Time: The War on Gallup

Maybe they can get NPR to pressure Mara Liasson from mentioning Gallup.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs slammed Gallup's daily tracking poll on Tuesday after it showed President Obama's approval rating had fallen to 47 percent, the lowest approval rating for any president at this stage of his presidency dating back to President Harry S Truman.

"If I was a heart patient and Gallup was my EKG, I'd visit my doctor," Gibbs said in the morning, off-camera briefing with reporters. "Five days ago there was an eleven-point spread. Now there is a one-point spread. I'm sure a six-year-old with a Crayon could do something not unlike that."

...

Gibbs reference to an "eleven-point spread" between Obama's approval and disapproval rating "five days ago" cannot be found in Gallup's data. In a Nov 30-Dec. 2 survey, Gallup found Obama's approval at 51 percent and his disapproval at 42 percent. A Nov. 27-29 survey found the ratio to be 51 percent approval to 41 percent disapproval.

Gallup has tracked the president's approval throughout the year.

Despite the scope of Gallup's data and its reputation for professional political polling, Gibbs dismissed its survey.

"I don't put a lot of stake in, never have, in the EKG that is daily Gallup trend. I don't pay a lot of attention to the meaninglessness of it."

I pay so little attention to it I'm going whine about it for five minutes, and then I'm going to cite his "spread" from five days back and compare it to the current spread.

But understand, I pay no mind to this poll. None at all. I'll also note that Obama is still at 66% support among Latino women between the ages of 18 and 44 in the Gallup poll, and that his cross-tabs for white unmarried high-school educated women are still at a respectable 56%, which is something you ought to notice yourself, even though I was so busy ignoring this poll I didn't notice it myself at all. What am I talking about? I have no idea.

What is "Gallup"? Why are we talking about horses? Ahem, a little rimshot there. But seriously, I have never heard of this "Gallup poll" of which you speak. And it also has a 3.8% margin of error with a 95% confidence interval so what does it really mean?

Nothing, that's what.

Next question.

posted by Ace at 01:11 PM

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