Tony Blankley, polling mastermind

Via Atrios, Media Matters has a hilarious quote of Tony Blankley trying to convince himself (and others) that the Iraq war is popular:

These mis-characterizations of the president's view on victory are important, because public support of the war is largely based on an expectation of victory. In a major USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll from three weeks ago 32 percent of the public said we can't win the war in Iraq. Another 43 percent predict victory, while -- critically -- 21 percent say "the United States could win the war, but they don't think it will."

If one adds that "could win, but don't think we will win" 21 percent to the 43 percent who predict victory -- one has a very solid 64 percent supporting the war.

Non-reality-based poll interpretation! You gotta love it. For example, if you add the 58% of the public who think President Bush is doing a "only fair/poor" job to the 40% who think he's doing an "excellent/pretty good" job, then you have a very solid 98% of Americans supporting Bush! Just think of the possibilities...

Update 8/26: Michael Koplow makes an excellent point in comments -- Blankley is also claiming that perceptions of the likelihood of US victory in Iraq translate directly into support or opposition for the war, but that isn't necessarily true.

But of course, assessments of the war and support for it are closely related. And if you look at the results of poll Blankley refers to, it found that 58% of Americans believe we won't be able to establish a stable democratic government in Iraq and 51% of Americans believe the Bush administration deliberately misled the American people about WMDs in Iraq. Other recent polls show that 61% of Americans want to bring our troops home in the next year, 54% think we made a mistake in invading Iraq, 54% think the war was not worth it and 56% think the war is going "moderately badly" or "very badly." So it's very hard to believe that more than 45% of the public supports this war right now.

Comments

[Michael Koplow]

You're right about that absurdity, but it's actually even more absurd than that. He's saying that 64% predicting victory = 64% supporting the war. This doesn't make sense unless you show that the two are equivalent. For example, some might predict that the U.S. will achieve victory through a scorched-earth, WMD military campaign but consider that immoral (predicting victory but not supporting the war). On the other hand, some may consider the war such a moral cause that it needs to be supported regardless of whether it looks like we'll win (supporting the war but not predicting victory).

[Christian Fortin]

This sort of voodoo interpretation of the poles is, unfortunately, only the tip of the iceberg in Mr. Blankley's voluntary skewed version of reality. What is even more disturbing is the fact that, public opinion, hearing radically opposite positions from both sides and not being able to make a critical judgement about it due to a lack of time for and/or will to go mining through a variety of information sources (including foreign), has the instinctive tendency of imagining the truth as laying somewhere in between the two opposites. Hence, if a known commentator such as Mr. Blankley deliberately sends extremely skewed spins in the public domain, he, therefore, has a chance to bring the "mid-way" option closer to his personal and partisan views of the issues. This is what is so scary about the Evolution theory versus the so- called "Intelligent Design" debate - especially if both are tought at school- as ill-informed individuals may end-up thinking that the truth must rest "in-between" whereas overwhelming scientific evidences points towards Evolution and none towards its supposed counterpart.