NY Times doesn't believe their own poll, takes another...

...and the results come out the same. And they still can't believe it!

THE war in Iraq is the single most important continuing news issue right now. Public opinion about the war is a critical part of that story. That’s why when a finding about the war in a New York Times poll could not be easily explained, the paper went back and did another poll on the very same subject. It turns out the poll had gotten it right. Support for the initial invasion of Iraq, as measured by a question The New York Times/CBS News Poll has asked since December 2003, increased modestly compared with two months ago.

The NY Times admits in the first paragraph that they do polls to create a news story. But this poll was meant to further their anti-Iraq war agenda but for some strange reason they did not get the result they wanted so they did the poll over again. Surprise! Same result.

Of course they describe the increase in support for the Iraq war from 35% to 42% a modest increase. A 7% increase over two months sounds like a significant increase and it corresponds with the positive news that is beginning to creep out due to the "surge" in troops in Iraq.

The polling took place during a week when there was no shortage of news about the war. Congress was debating the war; the Bush administration issued a report saying the Iraqi government had failed to meet many of the benchmarks it was supposed to meet; and prominent Republicans were distancing themselves from Mr. Bush on Iraq.

Again the NY Times just cannot understand what is going on. They tried their best to continue the negative news drumbeat but somehow the public support increased.

The July numbers represented a change. It was counterintuitive. None of the other war-related questions showed change. Mr. Bush’s approval rating had not changed. Nor had approval of his handling of Iraq. The level of support for Mr. Bush’s decision to send more troops to Iraq — the “surge” — was about the same as it had been in past polls. Support for the decision to go to war had risen modestly and nothing else in the poll could explain it.

Still dumbfounded!

Once in a while a poll finding doesn’t make sense. Sometimes The Times will wait to publish the results until another poll is taken asking the question again. But such a shift happens rarely with questions like this one, which the paper has asked many times over a long period.

What could explain the change? Perhaps, the answers about the war had inadvertently been influenced by placing them a few questions away from one about Mrs. Clinton’s not having repudiated her decision in 2002 to vote to authorize the war.

It was just a hunch, but it was all there was. Along with CBS News, The Times decided to poll again, to ask the war trend question without the possible influence of the question about Mrs. Clinton.

When the second round of results came back, the numbers were nearly identical to the ones found in the poll about Mrs. Clinton. In the poll conducted last weekend with 889 adults, 42 percent of the respondents said the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, and 51 percent said the United States should have stayed out.

It really is quite comical to read this piece. You can sense the exasperation of Janet Elder who is just unable to figure just what the hell is going on!

But wait...she may be on to something;

There was also a drop in the number of people who said the war was going badly. In the latest poll, 66 percent of Americans said things were going badly for the United States in its efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq. That is down from 76 percent who said the same thing in May.

What was driving the change still wasn’t all that clear, but at least the paper had confidence in the results and was able to report the findings.

One thing is certain. The question will be asked again. The polls were conducted nationwide by telephone and each had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Well....the answer is right there in front of Ms. Elder and she still can't see it.

Obviously if positive news gets out that we are winning the war, that in turn creates positive poll results. Or in the NY Times case poll results they just didn't expect (or want) due to all of the work they have done to undermine the administration and the military and convince their readers that we cannot win and that we must surrender!

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