Article VI Blog

Over the weekend, the LATimes/Bloomberg released the results of a poll it took on how religion affects voting. Here is the LA Times telling and here is the Bloomberg. At this point, I am not sure there is much that can be said based on the poll. It appears to be of "voters", but I can find no information about how those people were defined. In fact, I can't find the raw poll at all. This may, in fact, explain the LA Times story which has a few paragraphs on the results and then turns the story into a discussion amongst experts on whether Romney has a problem or not. So many questions are not answered, most importantly information about the people saying they would not vote for a Mormon, or an evangelical Christian, or a Muslim. Is the 37% that would not vote for a Mormon of one or a few specific groups? Are the 21% that say they would not vote for an evangelical Christian all members of MoveOn.org, perhaps contributers to Daily Kos? Are these likely voters or registered voters? How much overlap is there between the 37% and the 21%? Many people would not make the distinction. Here is the brief section on how the poll was conducted:

The Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll contacted 1,321 adults nationwide by telephone June 24 through 27. Telephone numbers were chosen from a list of all exchanges in the nation, and random-digit dialing techniques allowed listed and unlisted numbers to be contacted. Multiple attempts were made to contact each number. Results were weighted slightly to conform with census figures for sex, race, age, education and region. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. For certain subgroups, the error margin may be somewhat higher. Poll results may also be affected by such factors as question wording and the order in which questions were presented.

What's the political affiliation of the respondants for crying out loud? Think about it! - If the vast majority of respondents were Democrats, don't you think this might skew the results just a bit? What's the affect of other consideration of the answers - How does the question play when he is confronted with different opponents? So, the conclusion of this contributer to this blog, is that this poll was a "make news" poll - something that reporters could use to as a lever to get interviews with people on Romney and his religion - purely to bring up Romney's religion. The point of the poll was purely as a basis for comment by the various experts cited in the story. As evidence I point to the fact that no other major news outlet has carried a story on it, though blogs have commented greatly - like this peice for example. (I agree with the criticism of Romney's religion strategy entirely, by the way.) After reading the story and researching whatever is available on the internet, I come away knowing no more than I knew before. There is a significant group of people for whom Romney's religion is an issue, but is it enough to really affect the outcome of the election, or under what conditions it could, we are left clueless. In the end it seems this was a poll designed to, if at all possible, MAKE Romeny's religion an issue, or at least religion in general an issue. This, dear reader, is how the legacy media exercises its bias.

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