Fishy Polls.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(EDITORIALS)(Editorial)

Public Opinion: Did you know that President Bush's popularity has plunged? Or that American GIs favor leaving Iraq by a ratio of 3-to-1? That's what some recent polls say. But we're skeptical.

We have a healthy respect for polls, given that we run one ourselves, the monthly IBD/TIPP Poll. But we also know that the information gleaned from a poll -- and the methods used to crunch raw data -- always deserve close scrutiny.

That's why we were curious to see an Associated Press story with the headline "Poll: Bush Ratings At All-Time Low." The CBS poll in question showed only 34% approve of the job President Bush is doing, down from 42% a month earlier. And, perhaps worse, 51% say the president doesn't care much about people like them.

Sounds devastating. After all, 34% is 34%, right? Well, not in polling -- where there are raw numbers and then there are numbers adjusted to reflect each party's presumed share of the electorate, usually based on party registration. Pollsters routinely adjust raw data to reflect this. But if the wrong adjustments are made, the data can become twisted and wrong -- very wrong.

Is that the case with the CBS poll? It weighted the population at 28% Republican to 37% Democrat -- a weighting, quite frankly, that seems wildly out of whack. By comparison, Gallup's first four surveys of 2006 had the following breakdown: 33% Republican, 32% Democrat, 33% independent. So someone is way off.

We're on record as believing there's a bias problem at CBS News, and that nowhere is it more evident than in how it covers ...