There are lies, damn lies and statistics. Then there’s the fourth and unspoken part of that equivocation equation. That being “polls.” I have never answered a pollster’s questions. I was called once, in fact, very recently, from a number I didn’t recognize. After being called three times, I looked up the number. It was a pollster. Too late to take the call. I didn’t have the chance to answer whatever question was being asked. It may have been this particular CBS poll.
“Most Believe Trump Probably Guilty of a Crime as NYC Trial Comes to an End”
CBS News poll: Most Americans believe Donald Trump is definitely or probably guilty of a crime in his New York criminal case. https://t.co/PJ5CTNh7QK
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 23, 2024
CBS asked 1,402 people. Out of a population of 336,000,000, asking 1,402 people seems to be a rather small sampling. Nonetheless, the CBS pollsters (apparently) asked “the public” what they thought of the Trump Trial. CBS reported it as follows:
Opinions are highly partisan, with nearly all Democrats believing Trump is guilty and about eight in 10 Republicans saying the opposite. Republicans are less certain in their views. While three in four Democrats say he is “definitely” guilty, only half of Republicans say he is “definitely” not.
The public is more split on what they think the jury will decide, with about half expecting jurors to find Trump guilty and half saying the opposite. And views on both sides are far from certain. For example, far more say jurors will “probably” convict Trump than “definitely” convict him.
You don’t have to dig deep to see that the poll results are useless wish-casting. The sampling was small, and the poll was conducted over a week, starting on May 14th. How many people were sampled while admitted liar, admitted thief, and convicted felon Michael Cohen was answering prosecution questions? We don’t know. How many people were polled after Michael Cohen was gutted by cross-examination? We don’t know.
How many Democrats were polled? They were oversampled. How many Independents? They were oversampled. How many Republicans? Undersampled. Women were oversampled.
The poll results tell us only a few relevant facts. The majority of the people polled didn’t have a clue. The majority had only “heard” some to nothing at all about the trial. Although 93 percent of Democrats said that Trump was “guilty of a crime” (what crime we still don’t know), only 37 percent of Democrats claimed that they had “heard” a lot about the trial.
What does that mean? It means that the vast majority of polled Democrats were blindly throwing darts at the “Orange Man Bad” board.
There is also this:
The data includes an oversample in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The sample was weighted by gender, age, race, and education, based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, as well as past votes. The margin of error is ±4.4 points.
Ok, CBS – not only did you ask 1,402 people “how do you feel” questions, but you had a plus or minus of 4.4 percent error rate.
No matter. CBS got its propaganda headline.
Most “Americans” think Trump is guilty!
No — sorry, CBS. You found about 780 people (plus or minus 30 people) out of a population of 336,000,000 who “think” Trump is guilty of some crime. They don’t know what crime — but some crime. Most of those 780 people have little to no idea what they are claiming, thinking, or believing, and they have paid no attention to the trial but “Orange Man Bad.”
Well done, CBS. This is the state of “journalism”.
