Tuesday, March 17, 2009

People lie to pollsters pt. 2

I argued last fall that while I don't think people lie to pollsters about who they plan to support in an election or what they think about a hot button issue, I do think they sometimes fib about their level of informedness, wanting to make it seem like they follow politics more closely than they actually do.

That's definitely the case with a question we asked on our poll last weekend about whether or not respondents watched Governor Perdue's State of the State Address last week. 32% of the state's voters claimed they did. I would be surprised if actual viewership was more than a tenth of that- perhaps 3% of the state's voters- but I bet even that's on the high end.

The ratings weren't even close to that high for the Carolina-Duke game last weekend.

Either way there are indications within the numbers that the speech might have been a success for the Governor. Her approval rating among those who claimed to watch the speech (51/38) was a good deal better than among those who admitted they didn't (40/34).

If anyone has any hard numbers on tv viewership for the State of the State address, please share!

Full results here.

2 comments:

  1. I have always lied to pollsters, even when selected for Nielsen's Ratings because I hate hate hate being disturbed unsolicited...especially on the telephone.

    The liars will probably, more or less, tend to cancel each other out.

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  2. I guess Perdues supporters feel like they should have watched the address and are therefore more likely to lie. Republicans aren't interested in the speech anyway and can tell the truth. I think this explains the whole difference in her approval ratings. What's the difference in favorability?

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