[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 21950]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE POLLS

  (Mr. SMITH of Texas asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Madam Speaker, following President Obama's 
address to a joint session of Congress about health care, the national 
media touted polls showing a bump in public approval of the President's 
health care plan, but the media failed to point out that the polls 
vastly oversampled Democrats. For example, a CBS poll last week 
trumpeted ``a 12-point improvement'' in the President's approval rating 
on health care following his speech. CBS failed to mention that 
Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the poll sample by 15 percentage 
points, far greater than the actual party identification gap.
  Worse, a CNN poll touted a ``double-digit post-speech jump'' for the 
President, but the poll oversampled Democrats by more than a 2-1 
margin.
  When questioning far more Democrats than Republicans, it should come 
as no surprise that poll results favor a liberal Democratic agenda. The 
media should be objective and not intentionally slant their polling 
data.

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