I'm looking through the questions and the responses to the New York Times/CBS News poll and I've got some serious questions regarding it and the summary offered on the front page today. I'll be blogging on the survey this evening but for now, if you have time, look through the questions themselves. I think questions 33 and 37 are useless because they are not clear. I've asked nine people the questions so far and allowed them to answer in the categories the poll provides (yes, no, depends, don't know/no answer). After they answer, I ask them to explain what they are answering to.
Here's question 37: "Is it possible you would ever vote for a candidate who does not share your views on the issue of abortion, or is the subject so important that you could not vote for a candidate who disagrees with you?"
A "yes" told me he said "yes" because he could never "vote for a candidate who disagrees with you" on this issue. Another "yes" only went by the first part of the question. Three pointed out that this yes or no question actually seems to require two answers because there are two contradictory questions being asked.
I'd agree with that.
Let's say you're strongly anti-choice. (I'm pro-choice.) Try to answer the following:
"Is it possible you would ever vote for a candidate who does not share your views on the issue of abortion?"
No.
"Is the subject so important that you could not vote for a candidate who disagrees with you?"
Yes.
So how can these two contradictory questions be combined into one question with any expectation of a yes or no answer?
Question 33 has the same problem but it focuses on gay marriage.
Again, I'll post more later this evening after I've had time to run some of these questions by some more people.
Also Democracy Now! is broadcasting from Spain this week. Many strong stories today but I recommend this one:
We speak with Javier Couso and Maribel Permuy, the brother and mother of Spanish journalist, Jose Couso, who was killed by US forces in an attack at the Palestine hotel in Baghdad on April 8th 2003. They are calling on a full investigation into whether journalists were deliberately targeted by the military.
You can watch or listen to this segment by clicking on http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/23/1457213
but as of yet there's no rush transcript for the segment.
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