Monday, April 03, 2006

Polls and Lemmings

An article by Nancy Benac of the Associated Press about a recent poll on attitudes toward illegal immigration was printed in national newspapers today as the U.S. Senate debates and votes on the hot-potato illegal immigration bill.

President Bush wants a corporate-friendly guest worker program for illegal immigrants in order to allow them to stay in the country virtually without penalty even though in violation of our immigration laws......they crashed our gates.

The lead paragraph in the article states......"Americans are divided about whether illegal immigrants hurt the country, an AP-Ipsos poll has found. More than one-half of those questioned said they were open to allowing undocumented workers to obtain some temporary legal status so they can stay in the United States."

This survey sampled 1,003 adults and was conducted last Tuesday through Thursday.

Observation......1,003 seems a very small sample for such an important and influential poll released in the teeth of the Senate debate on illegal immigration and picked up by vast numbers of newspapers throughout the country.

To the poll question "Would you describe yourself as a born-again or evangelical Christian, or not?" nearly 40 per cent answered "Yes." Seems like quite a high number of Bush-leaning respondents.

To the question "Would you favor or oppose allowing immigrants with jobs who are in the United States illegally to apply for legal, temporary worker status?" there were 28 per cent who strongly opposed and 26 per cent who strongly favored.

The "somewhat favored" was 30 per cent but they were placed in the favored category thereby greatly increasing the "favorable" poll result. The other tricky part of this leading question is "immigrants with jobs".....many must not have jobs otherwise how could 700,000 of them have shown up to march "for their rights" last month in Los Angeles.

Polls influence public opinion. Our legislators are influenced by the results of these polls.

Does a 1,003 respondent survey really represent an adequate sampling and valid poll?

Are we being led like lemmings over the immigration amnesty cliff?




No comments: