The AP Strikes Again

I don't know what it is about the Associated Press, but when I see any story with their logo on it, I know the story's got to be crap.  This time, I see yet another article telling us how bad things are for Obama and Democrats, because one poll is so heavily against them.  You know, because Obama's still the most popular politician in the country, yet not quite as popular as he's been in the past because his approval rating is a dismal 49%, on a poll with a 4.3 point margin of error.

But first off, it's just one poll.  One poll which says a third of people are Tea Partiers.  A third??  Fox News' recent poll put the number at 19%, while other polls put it at 13%.  That alone would suggest that this poll might have skewed just a bit towards conservatives.  And if we view the actual poll results, we see a five point shift of Independents leaning from Dem to Repub, and a six-point shift of people identifying as conservatives, taking three points each from moderates and liberals.  Either something massive just happened, or this poll is an outlier which leans right.

Oh, and get this: It showed that 31% of people support the Tea Party, yet only 16% say they know much about it.  Oh, and only 28% of people have a "favorable" view of the Tea Party, meaning that 3% of them supposedly don't even like the group they're in. At a guess, I think they're asking the wrong question and this poll didn't say what they think it said.

And the poll shows that only 16% said they "strongly agree" with the Tea Party, while the others only "somewhat agree."  Methinks 16% is probably the closer figure for true Tea Partiers, with active Tea Partiers being an even smaller group than that.  I wonder why the AP didn't mention that.  I also wonder if the media will ever realize that many "Independents" are Republicans who prefer to think of themselves as independent.

Tea Partiers for Obama

And check out this absurdist paragraph:

And it could get worse for Democrats: One-third of those surveyed consider themselves tea party supporters, and three-quarters of those people are overwhelmingly Republicans or right-leaning independents. That means they are more likely to vote with the GOP in this fall's midterms, when energized base voters will be crucial amid the typical low turnout of a non-presidential election year.

Oh, no!  Three-Quarters of Tea Partiers might vote Republican!!  Whatever can Obama do to win them back?  Oh yeah: Nothing.  This isn't a separate movement which could go in either direction.  These are the hardcore anti-Obama Republicans who chose to call themselves Tea Partiers to show how rebellious they are towards Obama.  This isn't getting worse for Democrats.  This is where things were before Obama became president.  They're not voting with Republicans.  They are Republicans.

Oh, and for as badly as things are for Democrats, this poll still shows them as being slightly more popular than Republicans, while Dem numbers actually went up.  No word yet on when the AP will tell us about how bad this is for Republicans.