The Democratic National Committee's dial group testing of the President's health care address on Wednesday showed a significant increase in the number of voters who held positive opinions about the president's plan, according to an internal DNC memo obtained by this column. address.pdf
Research conducted with 49 voters in Tempe, Arizona by David Binder, who was Obama's campaign focus group guru, suggests to Democrats that the speech was "effective at alleviating concerns of voters and impressing upon them that the President has a strong plan to reform health care," the memo says. "Even among those voters who held neutral or negative opinions of the President, substantial positive movement was shown as the proportion of these participants supporting the President's plan increased by nearly 40% after the speech.
According to Binder, the most highly rated section of the speech was Obama's description of new regulations on the insurance industry.
"Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny
you coverage because of a pre‐existing condition. As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out‐of‐pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick"
Dials also turned high when Obama said this:
"I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business. They provide a legitimate service, and employ a lot of our friends and neighbors. I just want to hold them accountable."
"The time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action. Now is when we must bring the best ideas of both parties together, and show the American people that we can still do what we were sent here to do. Now is the time to deliver on health care."
The memo doesn't say what the panelists didn't like -- and one wouldn't expect to find such a thing in a DNC memo -- but Binder's work is well respected and he is seen as honest by Republican pollster colleagues.
Maybe one of your office mates can help you remove the hook from your mouth.
Maybe one of yours could help you remove your head from your...well, you know....
Sorry to spoil your fun Matty but I'm a liberal Democrat. That means I'd prefer that journalists actually report and ask questions as opposed to regurgitating focus group findings that magically land on their desks, even if the source is the DNC. Now grab your ears and pull.
Wow. 49 people in one city in one state. Could we please cut down on the sample size a little more? Maybe move it to the Chicago neighborhood of the Obama clan? Pick out one family member and one close friend? Now that'd be representative of all Americans. Right?
I thought, from my rememberance of college years, that a valid statistical sample should be pulled in such a manner that it is truly representative of the whole population. Maybe my professors were wrong.
Your professors were probably right, insofar as they were talking about quantitative methods and quantitative research. What is reported upon here is a focus group, which is qualitative research. Maybe, if you weren't so busy being sarcastic and snarky, you'd have noticed that none of the findings are reported upon in statistical terms. They simply report which parts of the speech received the most positive response from the participants in this focus group. That is proper reporting of the findings from qualitative investigation.
By contrast, had they said something like, "72 percent of group participants said 'xyz'" they would be improperly suggesting that a focus group finding was representative of any population larger than the 49 people in the room.
BTW, in a somewhat later comment, below, you wrongly refer to the research being reported upon as a "survey." It is not and the researchers involved and the reporter relaying their findings never suggest in any way that it is. So, yes, continue to follow your "gut." That's clearly easier for you than actually bothering to learn anything about research methodology and reporting.
Oddly enough, 49 people are enough for this type of work. Unfortunately, they have to be the RIGHT 49...and since that's almost impossible you invariably use a much larger sample. But truly, bias not sample size is the problem here.
However, cheer up: GM recently canceled the launch of a new Buick when a dozen people they pulled in didn't like the car...and in today's paper you can see the CEO gushing over how good he's sure the new cars are because he and his staff drove them. How many millions of dollars of market research obviously disappeared down the memory hole for this to be happening? It explains a lot.
So...would you prefer not-so-good research that someone reads or first class research that gets ignored?
Well, I follow my gut. It's probably kept me out of more trouble than it's gotten me into.
As far as research and data goes, I'm quite leary of work done by anyone wanting to sell me something when that work says their something is the best thing for me.
A democratic survey saying that the democratic plan is a good one....it's not something I'm taking seriously.