2007-05-25

Short Answers

Atrios wonders:
I'm fascinated by this 72% wrong track number. I'd like to understand it more. I'm not sure I have sense of the basic reasons why so many people think things are going to hell. We can all come up with various possibilities, and there won't be one single answer, but I still think there's probably a coherent narrative to be teased out. I'm just not sure what it is.
Answer: Immigration. This poll was taken during May 18-23, and the immigration deal was announced on the 17th. This is the summary of the story at FoxNews:
A bipartisan group of Senate lawmakers and the White House struck an immigration reform deal Thursday that would grant legal status to the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States ...
That's amnesty, right in the first sentence.

I think the reason behind the spike to 72% is as clear as day. We already had a high wrongtrack number before immigration, so only diehard Republicans - disproportionately Fox views according to a recent study - still believed the country was on the right track. Then the immigration deal hits, socking the Fox News viewing, talk-radio listening base right in the ragerocks. If you had been listening to talk radio, Atrios, you wouldn't have to wonder why the Wrongtrack number spiked.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think Atrios was saying he thought there was a story in the 28% who thought things were going well... that seems obvious - the End Days are near, and they're happy about it!