Michael Smerconish: Race poll: Right or wrong?
9.25.08
THAT AP/Yahoo News poll about the impact of race on the presidential election couldn't be right.
Or could it?
Earlier this week, political heads turned when the Associated Press and Yahoo, with some involvement from Stanford University, released a stunning survey on race. It revealed that:
* A third of the white Democrats polled agreed that at least one negative descriptor - "lazy" or "violent," for example - described most black people.
* 20 percent of white respondents said the word "violent" strongly applied to black people.
* When offered positive adjectives, white respondents were less likely to agree that those words accurately described African-Americans.
* The percentage of voters who wouldn't vote for Obama because of his race could outweigh the 2.5 percent difference between President Bush and John Kerry in 2004. In fact, the survey concluded, Obama would get a 6 percent bump if the racial quotient were somehow removed.
With findings like those, no wonder it received tremendous news coverage. I discussed it on my radio program on Monday morning, and heard from many callers who were willing to give voice to that data.
Take Linda, for instance. She told me the word "violent" describes most black people, and cited the lifestyle choices and irresponsibility that has "permeated their culture."
"First is when they chose the welfare program over marriage. Second, when they embraced this idea that if you're black and do well in school, you're a white wannabe. And third is when they embraced gangsta rap . . . There are more, but they are the three main things that ruined the blacks, and they don't want to admit it," Linda told me.
Then came the e-mail.
"Blacks ARE violent, complainers and irresponsible for the most part and no city in the country is a better example of that than Philadelphia," wrote Paul.
"Why is thinking that blacks are 'responsible for their own troubles' a racist statement?" wondered Bob.
Mark wrote: "I especially appreciate the way that a lawyer can so easily ignore facts and street realities he professes to grasp. I mean the fact that blacks comprise 12 percent of the overall population and yet over 50 percent of the prison population and 37 percent of the welfare rolls respectively is no basis for thinking that they are prone towards violence and laziness?"
The poll data and the responses were a downer. While there's no news in the existence of a few knuckleheads, could they really be out there in droves? I wanted to know more about the survey.
So I asked my producer to invite the poll architects (the AP pollster; Knowledge Networks, the firm that set up the polling technique, and the Stanford professor who analyzed the data, Paul Sniderman) to appear on my show. She's dogged, but got no reply to repeated requests, or was told the people she requested could not come on.
That was the first unusual sign.
That same day, I was scheduled to appear on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews."
During the day, I was advised of the anticipated topics. I wasn't surprised that the poll on race would be the focus of the segment. But en route to the studio came word of a change. I was told that there were some concerns about the poll's methodology at NBC, and it would no longer lead off the segment. Chris Matthews would not mention it.
NBC was unwilling to give credence to the poll results?
While the discussion still concerned race, it was launched with an Obama sound bite in which he deflected the race question, saying "ultimately . . . the question's going to be decided by a guy or a woman who is working hard every day trying to save enough to send their kid to college, trying to pay the bills."
Now I wonder if this entire kerfuffle was overblown. Maybe the survey wasn't worth all the ink it received - 51,300 mentions by my rudimentary Google search.
For his part, Obama continues to take the high road. "Now are there gonna be some people who don't vote for me because I'm black? Of course. There are probably some African-Americans who are voting for me because I'm black. Or maybe others who are just inspired by the idea of breaking new ground. And so I think all that's a wash," he said in a "60 Minutes" interview.
Of course, there's Linda, Paul, Bob and Mark. We won't know how big a segment they represent until the evening of Nov. 4. *
Listen to Michael Smerconish 5-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Contact him via the Web at www.mastalk.com.