Fox polls on Obama's smoking

Fox is known for its use of loaded and/or wacky polling questions, but the latest one is just bizarre -- they polled on whether people think President Obama is "sneaking cigarettes at the White House" (PDF):

53. Barack Obama says he quit smoking cigarettes. Do you think Obama is still sneaking cigarettes at the White House or do you think he has completely quit smoking?

	Still sneaking	Completely quit	Don't know
Overall	37%	30	33
Democrats	37%	37	26
Republicans	38%	27	35
Independents	38%	25	36

The public has no idea what Obama is doing in private at the White House. So why should we care what they think he's doing? I'm guessing the intent here is to suggest that Obama's stand on the tobacco regulation legislation is hypocritical (though it's hard to say because the Fox release doesn't include the questions asked immediately before the one above). If so, I'm not sure why public opinion on him sneaking cigarettes would be relevant to that (silly) claim. Otherwise, it doesn't make much sense -- the Foxnews.com report on the poll just presents it as a total non sequitur.

Comments

[Rob]

Fox asks these poll questions for the same reason Dartmouth plays football games: you already know what the result will be, but it fills the time.

[News Reference]

Murdoch's right wing FOX propaganda machine is just fishing for a result so that they can trumpet a story saying that X% of people think that a Dem President is "sneaking" around the White House "sneaking" stuff.

The added bonus is that they got you to associate the word "sneaking" with the Dem President four different times just by citing their poll (seven if you include the three times I've used it).

And FOX got a double bonus because you sent people over to the FOX website.

So that adds up to a triple win for the right wing FOX propaganda machine.

[Jinchi]

Actually, what strikes me about the poll is how few respondents answered "Don't know", which is of course the answer that most should have given.

[David]

I agree that almost nobody knows what Obama is actually doing, but people do know what they think he's doing, so any anwer to this silly poll may be may be valid.