Faithful America starts petition to stop ridiculous exit poll practice February 20, 2008
Posted by Zack in DC , trackback
The newly relaunched group Faithful America has started a petition to stop exit polls that ask only Republicans about their religious affiliation and church attendance:
The presidential primary exit polls, sponsored by ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and the AP, must stop stereotyping people of faith. We call on the media pollsters to ask all voters — Republicans and Democrats — the same religion questions on the exit poll surveys.
What’s also incredible, by the way, is that the same exit polls only ask Democrats about union membership.
Do TV ratings depend on telling a meta-story of an America divided into two completely separate cultures or something? Why do they run their polls this way?
Faithful America is a project of Faith in Public Life, the organization that commissioned its own exit polls that showed that religion and political parties do not match up. A whole lot of people have been complaining about this polling issue, and it’s great that Faith in Public Life and now Faithful America are standing up and doing something about it.
Tags: 2008, exit polling, Faith in Public Life, Faithful America
Comments»
Umm…. You realize this is completely untrue?
Ah - it’s good to see that CNN did right in that recent poll. But they were only asking Republicans until recently — maybe right up until this poll? I definitely saw many that only asked Republicans. Keep an eye on the Faithful America site — maybe they’ll have an update.
Nice post and completely agree with your point.
Did you see Tony Campolo on Colbert (I think it was a re-run) talking about Democrats who are evangelicals?
The exit polls have asked about religious identification from Democrats for every state so far except Iowa and South Carolina. They have asked about church attendance in every state except Iowa and Nevada.
What they have not asked, but have asked Republicans, is Are you born-again or evangelical?
Yeah, and while they’re at it, pollsters ought to confirm whether or not Democratic religious types want to join with the Republican religious types in continuing to deny legal rights to gay and lesbian Americans.
Poll watcher - thanks for the correction!
[…] ask Republicans about their religion affiliation and only ask Democrats about union membership. Do TV ratings depend on telling a meta-story of an America divided into two completely separate cultures or something? Why […]