Fox News ‘Misrepresents’ Its Own Gay Marriage Poll

A Fox News commissioned poll on same-sex marriage supposedly finds that a mere 37% of Americans support same sex marriage. The poll offers a civil unions option for respondents to choose, which 37% did. 25% opted for “no legal recognition” of same-sex relationships. The poll canvassed only 913 registered voters.

All of this is to be expected from Fox News, but what’s beyond the pale is the misrepresentation Fox News opted for to frame their story about the poll in a news report titled, “Fox News poll: Majority opposes gay marriage, doesn’t want constitutional amendment.”

Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin explains it quite well:

I’ve looked at this question upside and downside. I even played it backwards in case Satan had a secret message that only Led Zeppelin fans could hear. But try as I might, I see no question about “do you oppose gay marriage”.

I prefer Haagen Dasz ice cream [sic]. I really do. In fact, I think it is by far the best ice cream readily available in your local market. But if I’m at your house and you are serving homemade blackberry pie and you offer a scoop of Dryer’s vanilla, I’ll say “yes”. Because while I do love me some Haagen Dasz, I do not oppose Dryer’s.

You see, I understand the difference between preference and opposition. But I guess that is a subtlety which is too confusing for Fox. Or, at least, I hope that they were being stupid and not going for intentional deceit. I vastly prefer idiot to liars.

“There is actually nothing in the data that supports this conclusion,” that the majority “opposes gay marriage,” Zack Ford at Think Progress, writes, and adds:

A slew of polls have surveyed voters’ beliefs about marriage equality since President Obama’s endorsement last week, but the data collection is quickly becoming lazy and the interpretation sloppy. Monday’s CBS/New York Times poll has been roundly criticized for its incredibly small sample size (615) and the odd framing of its questions. Fox News unsurprisingly conducted a poll of its own in the same fashion and eagerly spun the results to accommodate its anti-equality agenda.

On Monday, in, “Why You Can Ignore Today’s CBS Poll On Civil Unions And Gay Marriage,” we here at The New Civil Rights Movement wrote:

I don’t trust any poll that doesn’t canvass at least 1000 respondents. Also, I don’t trust any poll that doesn’t release the raw data, especially the questions asked and the demographic breakdown.

While Fox did release statistical information, the gay marriage question was question number 42. We don’t know what questions 1 – 41 were. For all we know they could have been questions about religion, pedophilia, STDs, or any 41 of a number of issues that are flash points for people about same-sex relationships.

The pollster Fox News used has a questionable history of using extremely low sample sizes in political polls. While our rule of thumb here is any national or statewide poll that does not canvass 1000 people is questionable at best. In this poll, the combined team of Anderson Robbins Research and  Shaw & Company Research polled 913 respondents, which is close, but the team in this election cycle has offered GOP 2012 presidential race polls with sample sizes of, for example, 354 people, 356 people, and 407 people — far from a reliable measurement, in our opinion.

Senior Research Fellow at the Palm Center and author of Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America, Nathaniel Frank today published an article at The New Republic: “Don’t Believe the Polling on Gay Marriage!” It’s an important read.

My bottom line: polls are nice, moving the real numbers is about sharing our personal stories.