WSJ spins poll results to show good news for Bush

RAW STORY
Published: Thursday July 27, 2006

A poll completed by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News was presented to show good news for the Bush administration in today's Wall Street Journal, RAW STORY has found.

The report on the poll by the Journal's Senior Contributing Writer John Harwood states that "In the Journal/NBC poll, approval of Mr. Bush's job performance inched up to 39% from 37% last month, but a 56% majority disapproves of the president's job performance. Congress fares even worse, with 25% approval and 60% disapproval."

However, the survey results in PDF format show that there is a margin of error in the poll's findings of 3.1% in either direction. When confronted with similar results, a USA Today/Gallup Poll stated that "President George W. Bush's job approval rating holding in the same range" because the margin of error meant that there was no statistically significant change in Bush's approval ratings.

An NBC News report on the same poll also shows a contrast with the Journal's reporting. Political reporter Mark Murray wrote:

"Yet perhaps the most revealing finding in the poll is how little the political environment has changed in the past year. For the eighth straight survey since October 2005, President Bush's job approval rating sits below 40 percent; for the fourth straight time since March, just a third approve of his handling of Iraq; and also for a fourth straight time since March, only a quarter believe the nation is headed in the right direction."