Bloomberg Buncombe
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I can’t take Michael Bloomberg seriously. He now makes if durn near impossible.
His Mayors Against Illegal Guns cabal recently purchased a survey to measure public attitudes on gun control, which is interesting because ongoing polls by many other research firms have shown a steady downward approval of more restrictions. Had Bloomberg’s poll been conducted by a non-partisan organization, one might grant it and Michael some credibility. But Bloomberg, his pollster nor the results have any.
Hart Research was the polling company in question. They have been politely described as “Democrat polling firm”, which makes sense given that their clientele including the likes of:
- Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
- Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
- Democratic National Committee
- EMILY’s List (a national organization dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women to office)
In theory (though not practice) such a pollster might be able to conduct an unbiased survey, but in their survey instrument and the results, we see so many anomalies to cast their sanity as well as their sanctity into doubt. Herein the Lie of Statistics is sadly amusing and horribly obvious.
First: The questionnaire shows that survey callers knew the name of the respondent, and decline to speak with anyone else. This indicates a non-random survey, and one conducted from a list. Could the names have come from Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee donors and Emily’s ladies? That might skew results a tad.
Second: The obvious tell is that this survey asked respondents to self-identify as Republican, Democrat, Independent or other. Odd then that the results don’t report this demographic, thought it does delineate race, age, gender and education. This, I think, answers the first question.
Third: Respondents are asked an open ended question (“… what do you think are [the] most important things that could be done to prevent mass shooting …”) but they are not given a list of options from which to choose. The survey taker (for this Democrat polling company) is then required to then codify into a list (which is never presented to the respondent) what the respondent thought. Bloomberg applied interpretation without tracing, likely influenced by either the survey callers’ biases or the desired outcome of the survey.
Fourth: Though the survey was conducted in five states, only four are summarized on the pivotal favor/oppose results page (slide 19) and the responding state is cherry picked for each (in other words, only Arizona’s opinion about concerning concealed carry in courthouses is revealed). A sad case of The Lie of Picked Cherries, and combined with all of the above, The Lie of Synchronicity.
I could go on all day and half of tomorrow, but suffice it to say that Michael Bloomberg, the new figurehead of the gun control industry, bought the results he wanted and in the process acquired the souls of Hart Research employees.
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