Box Turtle Bulletin

NOM’s fantasyland poll

Cue the calliope, Kellyanne Conway is back with some more charmingly imaginative polling numbers. And just as a creative mind can almost believe that the beribboned wood-carved creations bobbing up and down are a real pack of wild horses, if you dream real hard and listen to the music, Conway’s polls can almost seem just like real ones.

But even at the Happiest Place on Earth, the music stops. And the wooden horse is just a wooden horse.

And, so too, when the giddy moment of make-believe ends, Kellyanne Conway’s “polls” remain nothing but tools for frauds and manipulators to try and convince themselves and others of things that simply are not true. And so it is to Conway’s ‘the polling company, inc.’ that the National Organization for Marriage has turned for consolation over Tuesday’s losses.

In some sad delusional effort to flash bright lights and play jingly music, NOM brings us this:

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) today released the results of a nationwide survey of voters conducted on Election Day that shows 60% of Americans who voted in the election favor marriage being the union of one man and one woman. The survey, conducted by respected pollster Kellyanne Conway’s firm ‘the polling company, inc.’ is consistent with a national survey they conducted this past September showing 57% of Americans then believed marriage should only be the union of one man and one woman.

“The outcome of the marriage votes in four very liberal states has caused some to speculate as to whether the American people have changed their views on marriage. This scientific poll shows that the answer to that is, ‘no’ they have not changed,” said Brian Brown, NOM’s president. “This survey shows that 60% of voters believe marriage is one man and one woman, which is consistent with the 57% result ‘the polling company’ found in September.”

How was that poll conducted?

Conducted by the polling company, inc., the survey interviewed 800 randomly selected people who actually voted.

You may note that the familiar language about “statistically valid random sampling methodology” was not used. Instead they opted for that phrase most associated with convenience sampling. And cues one that their results have about the same reliability as one would find by “randomly selecting” people at your local mall. That is, not much.

And the question?

Do you (ROTATED) agree or disagree that “marriage is between one man and one woman”?

Well let me ask you, do YOU disagree that marriage is between one man and one woman? I don’t. I’ve been to several marriages that were between one man and one woman. I just also happen to believe that marriage is between one man and one man or one woman and one woman.

Which pretty much means that this means nothing. It’s a garbled response to a deliberately confusing question asked to people that were not selected to reflect the populace or the voters. But it’s presented as though it has meaning.

It’s kinda sad, really.

When your best bet is to present a fantasy, a whimsical ride on a merry-go-round, you pretty much have no reality to rely on. And you know it. When you resort to candyfloss polling, it’s because you know, you know with certainty, that any real poll would show you a world much more real than you can stand seeing.

And while this kind of nonsensical fairy-tale alternate reality may be appropriate for light lifters like Brian Brown, it’s embarrassing to see educated once-thoughtful people like Robert George or Maggie Gallagher associated with this level of story telling and myth mongering.