A Case Study In Spin: Pew meets Daily Caller

[djAdvocate]

this article seems to have lit up a lot of the conservative blogs.  and while it is true that it does say some fairly damning things about Democrats, it is not nearly so damning as the actual surveys.  first, the article:

dailycaller.com/2012/04/22/science-say-gop-voters-better-informed-open-minded/#ixzz1ssc0VHdF

let's look at the assertions in the article and compare it to the survey:

On eight of 13 questions about politics, Republicans outscored Democrats by an average of 18 percentage points, according to a new Pew survey titled “Partisan Differences in Knowledge.”

first of all, there were 17 questions on the survey, not 13.  second, no matter how i run the numbers, i can't get 18% difference on (8) of those (17).  the best i get is +17%

www.people-press.org/2012/04/11/what-the-public-knows-about-the-political-parties/

second, if you take the remaining 9 questions on the survey, Democrats knew more than Republicans by an average of 1%, and the TOTAL of ALL questions surveyed was +7% GOP, which would be a fair, unbiased view of the survey.  but obviously daily caller has no interest in being fair or unbiased.

furthermore, the survey has a MOE of 4%, so, although statistically significant, the scores might be as little as 3% different.

The Pew survey adds to a wave of surveys and studies showing that GOP-sympathizers are better informed, more intellectually consistent, more open-minded, more empathetic and more receptive to criticism than their fellow Americans who support the Democratic Party.

the survey concluded ONLY that the GOP members surveyed outscored Democrats on "several key questions".  they also noted that Democrats outscored their GOP counterparts on five of the 17 questions.

it also pointed out that education is a far greater indicator of political knowledge than party.  and since the GOP is indeed more educated as a group, they tend to score better on this sort of survey.  one lesson that could be gleaned from this is that if we want a better informed voters, we should have higher educational standards across the board for all US citizens, but of course, you won't ever hear such a claim made in the Daily Caller.

next we move to another survey on social networking, and THIS assertion:

A March 12 Pew study showed that Democrats are far more likely that conservatives to disconnect from people who disagree with them.

“In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS [social networking sites] because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates,” said the report, tiled “Social networking sites and politics.”.”

first of all, liberals are far more likely to use SNS, which means that the majority of opinion on these sites is liberal opinion.  but second, liberals are a LOT MORE AGGRESSIVE with their views:

www.pewinternet.org/2012/03/12/main-findings-10/

again, i am not seeing where the 28% comes from.  i get 16% for that question.  and secondly, the writer fails to account for the possibility that liberals are generally more CONFLICT AVERSE than conservatives.  since the survey doesn't explore this possibility, i can say that the idea presented by the caller that liberals prefer to live in the echo chamber is not bourne out by this survey.

the Daily Caller is unabashedly conservative, and this is unabashedly conservative spin.  i have no problems with that.  but presenting it as unquestionable fact, or some holy grail that proves bias assertions of liberals is to basically use biased material to prove a bias = nonsense.