Bloomberg Poll 2/3 of Repubs Pick Israel over the US if Interests Diverge

66/33 is pretty cut and dried - frankly it's rare to see a question with responses that are as divisive as this.

Why shouldn't this be taken seriously? This is of a piece with the stated preference of the Republican Party, Bohener, McConnell, that moron from Oklahoma, Fox News, the monkeys on this board - why are you even questioning this?

It's only click bait because it's more or less unprecedented in contemporary era. If Republicans don't want people to click, they shouldn't behave in this fashion.

 

Yes, supporting a foreign country over your own is un-American. Not conplicated.

 

poll is a proxy for support of the Iran deal.

Only surprise to me is that independents are so evenly split.

 

You can see the actual poll questions here: http://images.businessweek.com/cms/2015-04-19/150417_final.pdf. I think respondents are primed to think about the question within the context of their contentment with Obama's job performance and the particulars of this particular Iran deal. If the survey started instead with questions about how people feel about our relationships with allies in general, or their philosophy on international relations in general, and then asked this same question of whether we should support Israel or pursue our own interests you'd get very different results.

 

Actually, Air Langhi picked the wrong question. Here was the actual question that glynch referenced. Note that it has nothing to do with Obama or Netanyahu.

 

then you are right. I apologize to glynch.

 

The category of independents is so problematic in American politics. As party identification has declined, you now have this large class of voters that calls themselves "independents" but votes with one of the main parties more than 80% of the time.

That creates such unpredictable polling. Independents swinging from one party to the other is just as often a reflection of who is calling themselves independent at that moment as it is a genuine move of swing voters.

Pollsters are going to have to find a way to balance this problem because its getting worse every year.

 

The question about Israel came before anything about foreign policy or the Iran deal. It did come after a couple of general Obama approval questions, though.

Even within the poll, the Obama/Netanyahu question came after the general Israel question, and produced MORE support for Obama than the other question, oddly enough.

 

Yeah, I shouldn't say within the context of the Iran deal, which hadn't been broached yet. But, it definitely is in the context of job performance satisfaction.

Anyway, I don't think it's a big deal or anything. Next time a Republican president has a disagreement with Israel, all the Republicans will line up to denounce Israel. They aren't actually traitors or anything. They're just exhibiting the same hypocrisies and poor logic that plague the entire species.

 

Israel can do what ever it likes to do, I do not have a problem with that. It is just very strange that the United States somehow have to unconditionally support whatever Israel does, when this is practically a one way benefit relationship, the United States gets less than nothing out of the relationship.

Somehow the politicians have to proclaim their unconditional support for another country before they are going to be elected is just bizarre. Even England do not have this kind of support and they are much more of a partner than Israel.

 

Looks like I have to explain a little bit more. When you write a poll question that is anything but short and simple, you are just guessing how people are going to interpret it. Drawing conclusions about society and groups of people in society based on that is unreliable at best and folly at worst.

Half the people responding to that question might be seeing and responding to the difference between "Israel is an important ally" and "Israel is an ally but". They could well be ignoring the rest of the question because they can't see past the first part. Especially when the poll question says "which do you agree with more?"

Now do you understand why it's BS and silly to draw conclusions based on the survey? I can't even read the surveys and decide if the pollster is honest but poor at their job or really good at their job but just trying to manufacture news.

 

At least the poller put up a question and obtained an answer.
You, on the other hand, just guessed at the result and pulled some numbers out of your azz. How did you decide that half of the people did not understand the question?
Are you telling me that you Republicans are so stupid such that they could not understand such simple question?

 

Grasping for straws this one is.

 

[rquoter]
“‘My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.'”

-G.K. Chesterton
[/rquoter]

I think think the quote above, and some of the leading language in the answer options points to some of what is going on here.

The statement "the only democracy in th region" gets trumped out a lot. The implication being that a vote for Israel is like investing in the future of democracy in the world. The thinking be that by supporting them unequivocally, even when it is against your short term interests - strikes a blow for the globalization of democracy.

Sometimes, however, if you care and support someone the best way to show it is to say "No" to them. If your mother just got her one year AA coin, and asks you to go buy her a bottle of scotch to celibrate, the way you show you care is by refusing it to her.

I think the Israelis have a cultural paranoia, on very firmly rooted in very good reasons, but sometimes if you have a friend who is amped up, scared, angry, and ready to start a fight, the best thing you can do for them is to say, "Step back. Relax. If you aproach things with some calm and perspective, things have a better chance of working out for everybody." Running to get your paranoid, angry friend his shotgun when he freaks out over a minor slight is not looking out for his best interests.

I think a lot of people don't really think through all the implications of unquestioning support, but probably mean we'll and aren't the nefarious, scheming plotters with an evil secret, agents that people on the far ends of the spectrum think people on the other side of the spectrum are.

Most things that go sideways do so because someone is stupid and careless as opposed to malicious and evil..

Obviously there are some religious types who think a vote for Israel will hasten "the rapture", but I don't believe that is a large enough demographic to account for the results.

Just my two cents.

 

Nah I think it's more like GOP will vote whatever is opposite of the other partyline

it probably doesn't matter what issue, what does Obama believe at the moment, ok, let's do whatever is the opposite

 

You have a point. The question is actually fine, it's the responses that are problematic. I have written more than my share fair of polls on behalf of advertisers and it's amusing how much bias they have in their polls without realizing it. My job is to help unbias it to help get real answers to make real decisions from. A more difficult task than many realize.

In this case, there is a lot of bias in the possible answers.

Qualifying one as "an important ally" and the other as "an ally" is peculiar. Why would you do that? It puts the emphasis on the type of ally and muddles the divergence of interest. This is a poor poll answer.

But worse is, "Israel is the only democracy in the region" and skipping that in the other response.

So the poll artificially is biased towards selecting the first response as a means to show a more dramatic result than there is. I'd be interested in seeing the result where the responses were exactly the same except for whether or not we should support an issue whether or our interests on that issue diverge or not.

I don't know how much impact that would have on the result, but I bet it would be at least some. Maybe more. Who knows.

 

PS - absolute patriotism above humanity is stupid. If USA decided its "interests" were to kill every non-American with a genetically engineered plague, while Israeli "interests" were to prevent this, count me on team Israel.

I think part of the outrage from glynch is the implied assumption that whatever Israel's interests are, they.have to be evil.

 

You just proved my point. I said half might have be believed "x". You are probably smarter than most of the people who answered the survey, and you failed to read my post accurately. If you still believe that answers to a complex question in a survey prove anything...then I can do nothing to wake you up. The survey results themselves prove that out was a terrible question - or an excellent one if it was intended to produce click bait.

And thanks Sweet Lou 42 - this is why psych 101 has people write surveys, to understand data manipulation. The rest of the people just remind me why I shouldn't waste my time on remedial education.

Then again, if my jimmies are this rustled, I guess I'm the one being trolled and manipulated. Congrats. That's it, right? If not, check back in five to ten years, maybe a little life will make you smarter.

 

You should forget your password again.

 

If you think that kind of question is complex then maybe you should take a few years to learn to read.