The Pew Research Center, according to its website, bills itself as a “nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping the world.”
But it’s the latest poll, released Thursday, may raise a few doubts, as well as eyebrows, about that, especially after people “research” how Pew drew its conclusions on President Joe Biden’s job performance.
The headline of the poll was that Biden “approaches the 100-day mark of his presidency with a relatively strong job approval rating.”
How strong? According to Pew, 59 percent of those polled approve of Biden, while 39 percent of meanies disapprove.
Pew said at this point, Biden has similar numbers as Barack Obama and George W. Bush and far outpaces Donald Trump. Go figure.
Pew, the “nonpartisan fact tank,” spun Biden’s comparison to his predecessor as follows:
“Views of Biden and his administration highlight several stark contrasts with opinions of his predecessor. Far more Americans say they like the way Biden conducts himself as president (46%) than say they don’t (27%), while another 27% have mixed feelings about his conduct. Similarly, 44% say he has changed the tone of political debate for the better, while 29% say he has made the tone of debate worse (27% say he has not changed it much).”
Of course, another way of looking at those numbers would conclude that 54 percent of those surveyed don’t particularly care for how Biden conducts himself, while 56 percent believe he has not improved the tone of America’s political debate.
There, Pew. Fixed it for ya.
Yet Pew, which remember is nonpartisan, had this to say about how Biden handles himself: “Relatively few Americans express negative views of the way he conducts himself as president.” That refers to the 27 percent. But again, a majority don’t give him full-throated support, so Biden does have a problem.
The tenor of this continues in the lengthy poll report.
For example, Pew found that 43 percent of respondents believe “the policies of the Biden administration are making the economy stronger than it was during Trump’s presidency.” Pew views the 57 percent who say the economy is stagnant or declining as “mixed.”
The bottom line of the poll is that, as Pew cuts through the partisan and racial divides, Democrats and minorities think Biden is great and Republicans and whites don’t.
And that’s the crux of the poll, even though the mainstream media will trumpet as Biden’s job-approval numbers as him delivering us from the darkness of the Trump years.
The news, however, is in the methodology.
On the last of seven web pages that the poll results cover, Pew acknowledges that the 5,109 adults it surveyed were broken down as follows:
Democrats totaled 3,253 of respondents, while Republicans comprised 1,706. (It’s unclear what happened to the other 50 respondents.)
But, in other words, Democrats made up 66 percent of the total number of people surveyed by Pew,
Even when Pew notes the percentages as it weighted them, 52 percent of respondents were Democrats and only 43 percent were Republicans. In short, looking at the raw numbers, two-thirds of people in the poll were from Biden’s party and his “approval” rating is still seven points shy of that – and a majority overall don’t approve of how he handles himself or believe that he’s changed the political conversation for the better.
Imagine what Biden’s actual numbers might be if Pew polled Democrats and Republicans equally.