I've raged before about ignoring polls. Basically, I remember when I used to work with telemarketing firms. We lied, made stuff up, and got stoned on the job, a lot. I can't believe that's changed.

But my own experiences aside, I like to think that Billmon's post reinforces another belief of mine: that there are two sets of numbers in our political landscape:

I realize a working knowledge of statistics isn't needed to get a high-paying job as a corporate journalist-- in fact, it's probably a handicap. But this is still ridiculous:

After a week of positive news for the White House — Zarqawi's corpse, blah blah blah — the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that President Bush's standing has slightly improved . . .
According to the poll, 37 percent approve of Bush's job performance — an increase of one point since the last survey in April.

This survey — which was conducted from June 9-12 of 1,002 adults, and which has a margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points

You have to wonder: Does the hack who wrote this story even know what the term "margin of error" means? Or does he think it's just the blank space at the top of all his term papers where his teachers used to write the "Fs"?

Posted by billmon at June 15, 2006 06:00 PM

Our SCLM is very stupid, that I don't doubt. Most of them probably don't know the difference, but for them, it hardly matters.

Like all constructs, much political discourse that dominates even many of the blogs is isn't real. It's a product of someone's mind, an idea or a meme or a concept, but it's not something one can touch or perceive with the eyes. But it's obviously very important, mainly because while we're talking about Invented Reality, we're not talking about what people are doing to make things worse for us, or better for them at our expense.

I have no doubt that decision makers, consultants, legalists and scholars have a very clear picture of Bush's numbers. I think they look at them constantly, and critically. I also think from that hard data comes the unreality that our SCLM obsesses over. We don't do ourselves a favor to follow that example. It's not merely about being stupid with numbers or not getting a complete picture, it's a framing question. Once we accept ideas like "Bush will never go below 25%" we've lost half the battle. This is America, and anything is possible. Or have we stopped believing that?

Polls are important. Actual statistics are even more so. I don't think you find many of the latter in the SCLM. My eyes and ears and neighbors seem a better set with which I can accurately gauge what's going on in this country. What I see is a great deal more dissatisfaction and the potential for a countermovement for real change.