Lies, Damn Lies, and Unprecedented Pessimism About the Economy

A couple days ago, we took a look at British tabloid The Independent's cover story, insisting the United States would enter a "great depression" in 2008, based on new food stamps participation data.  It took some doing, as that data needs to be considered slightly less superficially than the paper had seen fit, but it was a pretty clear example of sensationalized economic fearmongering with no statistical support, so we muddled through.

Today, it's a couple of stateside media outlets that are slinging the statistical snake oil.  Happily, this debunking is considerably (almost embarrassingly) easier.

Per the breathless synopsis, from CBS News:

CBS Poll: Views On Economy At All-Time Low

Americans' views on the economy and the general state of the country have hit an all-time low in the history of the CBS News/New York Times poll. Eighty-one percent of those polled say the country is on the wrong track, while only 14 percent believe it is heading in the right direction.

Compelling!  An "all-time" low.  Color me demoralized.  After all, this economy of ours has seen a heap of time.  Turns out, though, by "all-time" CBS means "since we began asking... in 1986."

Mmmkay.  So they could still get away with something like "Views On Economy Lowest In Recorded History" with the possible caveat "(As Recorded By Us and Excluding the Results of Other Polls That Date Back More Than Half a Century Before Ours)".

But is even that heavily qualified, less arresting proposition true?

Well, no.

The outlook on the economy is as bleak as views on the state of the country as a whole. Just 21 percent say the economy is in good shape - the lowest percentage recorded since October of 1992.

This "Condition of the Economy" question is the poll's primary gauge of public "views on [the] economy" (and therefore the metric a headline reader could be forgiven for assuming is the one described as being at an "all-time low").

But even in this vaunted 22-year-old poll, that metric only manages a 16-year low.

The question that did score the pollsters the unprecedented malaise they were looking for was whether the economy is worse off now than it was five years ago.  78% of respondents said they believed the economy is worse now than in 2003.

Well, that's not altogether shocking, either.  2003 was quite a year.  The S&P 500 returned 26%.  The economy was in its twelfth consecutive year of growth.  And the President signed into a law a sweeping package of tax cuts that let Americans keep a lot more of their money, spurred widespread investment, and helped extend that economic growth another several years.

Finally, it's worth noting that the poll surveyed more than 50% more self-identified Democrats than Republicans (40% to 26%, after demographic weighting adjustments).  These polls don't attempt to weight responses according to political party, so if your polling methods happen to over-represent one party, any resulting systematic bias is left in the results.

One can debate whether this poll's Democratic over-representation is ongoing and foreseeable (the poll database suggests this isn't a new phenomenon), but since we're dealing with a metric that surpasses the poll's own historical results (however heavily qualified and cherry-picked the metric may be), the results are still at least mildly notable, so long as that systematic polling bias remains constant.

Unfortunately for the tattered credibility remaining, it doesn't.

Two months ago, CBS conducted a similar poll, which found 71% of respondents labeling the economy "bad" (compared to 78% now).  But in the January poll, the Democrat-Republican imbalance was a mere 10 percentage points (38%-28%).  Still significantly stilted, but refreshingly objective when compared to this month's 14-point gap.

Sadly, if we want to stick with fully qualified, apples:apples comparisons, this forces us to adopt the further devitalized headline: "Views On Economy (As Recorded By Us and Excluding the Results of Other Polls That Date Back More Than Half a Century Before Ours (As Reported By a Predominantly Democratic Sample)) Lowest Since March 2008!"

Previously:  Lies, Damn Lies, and the Great Depression of 2008