Convoluted Polling
Plus misleading reporting.
Ok, so I allowed myself to click on this Breitbart headline (yes, I know) at Memeorandum: Poll: 71% Say Accurate Reporting of Hunter’s Laptop Could Have Altered 2020 Election. This just sparked a lot of questions, not the least of which is how they polled this specific hypothetical.
Oddly enough, the piece doesn’t say all that much about the poll, but links to a Daily Mail piece that declares in its headline: EXCLUSIVE: If only we’d known: three quarters of survey respondents say voters lacked ‘critical’ information about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 elections, and half would have voted differently. If you find that a bit convoluted, well, it is. After all, it is a hypothetical about the past and the and the main “finding” is based on a sub-sample of the poll.
Fun, isn’t it?
The Daily Mail piece actually discussed the poll (unlike the Breitbart piece), which was conducted by TIPP Insights: Info On Hunter Biden Laptop Could Have Swung The Election. TIPP has an A+ rating from FiveThirthyEight, for what that is worth (although those evaluations are from 2020). Interestingly, the write-up does describe the pollster as a “right-leaning polling outfit” (note it is is TIPP Insights reporting a TIPP poll).
The subheading of the TIPP Insights piece is telling, however (emphasis mine): “Seven in ten people following the story think that the 2020 Biden-Trump election would have played out differently.” Granted, it depends on what “following the story” means (I mean, if you are reading this, are you a follower of the story?), but it is likely that such persons who self-identify in such a fashion are more likely to have a specific media diet and political predilections, both of which are likely to make them already predisposed to think that the laptop story is a Big Deal(TM). Put less obliquely, the Hunter laptop has been an obsession of the right-wing infotainment types, meaning that people who are following it closely likely consume a lot of FNC, OAN, the NY Post and the like, which in turn creates its own biases into the poll.
From the TIPP piece (italics and emphasis from the original):
Of the 1351 persons surveyed by the TIPP Poll in December, over a third, 37%(501 persons), are closely following the Hunter Biden laptop issue, but 59% are not following the matter. 4% were unsure. The share of those following has increased from 32% in August to 37% in December.
The survey of 501 adults who follow the issue found that nearly two thirds believe the details about Hunter Biden’s chaotic lifestyle of drugs, prostitutes and overseas business dealings are authentic.
At a minimum, the 37% who are “closely following” the story are a minority of the overall population, and the odds are good that they are largely a good heavily influenced by anti-Biden media sources. The polling shows this group to be a far more Republican group, not surprisingly.
All of this leads to this chart:
I have to admit, I am not sure how to read this. Consider: if a respondent is a self-identified Republican (especially one who is “closely following” the Hunter Biden story), is it not likely that they voted for Trump? So, what would have changed? I cannot confirm how they filtred for “Republican” etc., but it would have been more useful to have asked how the respondents voted in 2020, rather than their party affiliation only.
Beyond that, what does “knowing…that the laptop contents were real and not ‘disinformation'” mean? Surely those who “closely follow” this story mostly already think this?
All I can actually glean from all of this is that there are people who want to signal how important that laptop story is to them, but the polling itself is utterly confusing, not the least of which is because a huge story is trying to be constructed out of a specific sub-sample of 501 respondents. The poll was also conducted online and while these days that can be more accurate than used to be the case, I would like to know more about the methodology (I downloaded some information from the TIPP site, but it was not as helpful as I would have liked).
In general, I really find this whole laptop story to be largely exhausting. I mean, yes, Hunter Biden appears to be a troubled person who has engaged in a range of questionable behavior (to put it kindly). Further, there is zero doubt (as we have repeatedly noted here at OTB) that he has cashed in on his father’s name. But I also figure that the odds there is proof of something can be hung around Joe Biden’s neck is almost zero. This is not because I think it is impossible for Joe to be corrupted, but because I think that if the NY Post/others who would want to damage Joe Biden had first that it would have been released before now. It would have been quite handy in 2020 (and in 2022, for that matter). Instead, we get innuendo and ridiculous stories about contact lists and calendars.
And call me crazy, but getting all upset that Twitter agreed to block dick pics is not a scandal.
Further, while one may wish to make an argument for why Twitter should be criticized for not allowing links to a NY Post story to be published, it isn’t like that was the only way for the word to get out. (And it isn’t like there is a right to have something tweeted).
The amount of scandal here just appears to be zero.
And the poll seems to exist to give a reason to write a story about how important the laptop is, rather than actually, you know, gleaning actual information. The more I think about it, the more I simply do not know what “Would Knowing The Laptop Contents Were Real And Not ‘Disinformation’ Have Changed Your Vote?” even mean in this context, especially in the context of respondents who likely voted for Trump. A follow-up question of “How would your vote have changed” would have helped if. Instead, the whole thing kind of makes my brain hurt.
For the life of me I cannot understand what “Hunter Biden’s Laptop” is about?
What does “knowing…that the laptop contents were real and not ‘disinformation” even mean?
Who determined this?
For all the attention this thing has gotten, no one seems to be able to articulate a crime.
See also; Russia Hoax, Benghazi, Her E-mails, Fast and Furious, the IRS Scandal, and now the Twitter Files.
Yawn.
Interesting recent news that H. Biden seems to be pursuing legal action against Fox News, Gym Jordan, Eric Trump and Rudy Giuliani.
Hunter Biden’s Laptop is real. But what was it doing in Ukraine? When is the last time a Windows update was run? So many questions. Benghazi.
It’s like repeating the words “Crowdstrike mail server” over and over. Sounds sinister and scares old people that don’t understand how technology works.
And the polling articles read like they came from a chatbot.
I think the actual question these people were answering was “Would it have changed the election if the stuff I fantasize was in Hunter Biden’s laptop actually was there?”
Obviously the only appropriate MAGA response to this question: “Yes. I would not have voted for Hunter Biden.”
@PT: “Crowdstrike” does sound pretty scary!
The fact that chart doesn’t provide the percentage breakouts for each of those segments is problematic. But the bigger issue, as you point out, is the question itself. It’s a question that doesn’t pass muster, both for the use of an ambiguous term like “real” and the use of the juxtaposition “real and not disinformation.”
However, reviewing the survey, that wasn’t the most tortured question on it. That award goes to:
Basing questions on convoluted hypothetical propositions is bad research practice. That’s survey design 101. And that’s before we get to how the phrasing in question definitely injects bias (or seems designed to play on the biases of the respondents).
They would have voted for Benito so hard, the touch screen on the polling machine would have broken into a million pieces.
Umm, maybe some of those Republicans changing their votes think what Hunter Biden did, as represented by the data on the laptop, was really smart and cool, and they would have voted for his dad because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and they didn’t have the option of voting for Hunter himself?
@matt bernius: The part of the response that most confused me was how one would be “not sure” about whether they were following a news story or not.
Since this “story” started gaining traction back in 2020, I’ve increasingly had the sense that it’s something of a shark-jumping moment for the right. They always come up with some largely manufactured controversy to hang around the neck of the Democratic nominee for president. It goes back to the anti-Clinton cottage industry from the ’90s. But these smears–bogus as they usually were–used to be effective propaganda. John Kerry was genuinely hurt by the Swift-Boat nonsense. So was Obama by the death panels, and Hillary by the email story.
In contrast, I see no evidence that the Hunter stuff has resonated with a soul outside the closed loop of right-wing media. To me, one of the big signs that they’re off their game is that they’ve centered the story around someone who is not actually the politician they’re trying to attack. They’ve spent so much energy on Hunter they’ve practically forgotten about Joe. Of course they have an explanation used to suggest the two are nefariously interlinked, but it’s striking so much of the focus is on a totally different person than the one they’re trying to destroy. This makes the whole thing come off as highly esoteric, inside-baseball, where it can take several minutes just to figure out what is being alleged that we’re supposed to be so outraged about. It lacks the immediate punch of a veteran who faked his war record, or a law designed to kill grandma, or a cabinet official who compromised state secrets. At least all of those stories were principally about the politician we were supposed to hate, and not a proxy.
@Kylopod:..They always come up with some largely manufactured controversy to hang around the neck of the Democratic nominee for president.
These slugs will never give up until they have revenge for the resignation of the disgraced Republican Richard M. Nixon in August of 1974.
Personally I think that August 9th should be a National Holiday. But that’s just me.
Silly Doctor, you’re not supposed to analyze a Breitbart story, you’re supposed to feel it. Half! Biden! Changed votes! If only we’d known! Can’t you just feel your blood boiling over the injustice of it all!?
It’s estimated the COVID-19 vaccines have saved the lives of over 3 million Americans.
So of course that fucking ghoul DeSantis wants to empanel a grand jury to investigate “wrongdoing” around the vaccines. He doesn’t specify what that might be, but it doesn’t matter, he’s just pandering.
How many Floridians are needlessly dead because of his anti-vaccine and anti-science actions? That’s something real for a grand jury to ask.
@Mikey: Well this is in the wrong place, I meant it to be in the open forum and of course there’s no edit button for me today.
They’re just saying the word ‘laptop’ over and over now and expecting it to mean something. They have had this thing for two years and there’s been no evidence of wrongdoing (other than doing drugs) on it. And certainly nothing to do with Joe Biden. The story is basically Hunter Biden was/is a mess and left his laptop with nude pics on it somewhere and never picked it up. That’s not really a story, if you understand what ‘story’ actually means.
The original Hunter Biden Post story consisted of a single “bombshell”: a Burisma executive had emailed Hunter, saying it had been great to spend some time with Hunter’s dad. Upon this frail foundation, Trump Republicans immediately constructed a fantastic fairytale that this proved (a) Joe lied when he said he never discussed Hunter’s business affairs with him, and (b) Joe was corrupt like nobody ever saw.
All the bullshit about China and “10% for the big guy!” came out AFTER the election.
Republicans peddling the “we was censored!” yarn also conveniently ignore this story published by the Post itself two weeks before the election:
Some “censorship”! https://nypost.com/2020/10/20/posts-hunter-biden-expose-soars-despite-social-media-censorship/
@Modulo Myself: Next you’ll be trying to tell us Hillary didn’t really sell all America’s uranium to the Russians. You think we came down in the last shower?
It’s not even “Hunter Biden’s Laptop” being recycled.
The basic attack line is the “Burisma allegations” which the “Laptop” recycled in October 2021, but were first floated IIRC back around in the impeachment hearings in 2019
It was b.s. the first, time around, well fermented b.s. second time, and by now it’s over-ripe b.s. well-past its sell-by date.
Somebody put a stake in this vampire.