Jon Cohen

WashPost Poll Finds Obama Approval Unaffected, President 'More Focused' Than Republicans on Issues People Care About
By Tim Graham | May 21, 2013 | 10:13 PM EDT

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday's front page that their ABC-Post poll showed Obama’s approval rating remained steady, with 51 percent approving and 44 percent disapproving. Then came the Post polling comparison to uncaring Republicans. Dan Balz and Jon Cohen reported: “A bare majority of Americans say they believe that Obama is focused on issues that are important to them personally; just 33 percent think so of congressional Republicans.” They illustrated that 18-point gap with a graph.

Should we draw from this question that lying to the public and using the imposing powers of the IRS to thwart conservative groups aren’t issues that the people need to care about? Would the Post have asked this question during the Watergate scandal? Or Iran-Contra? Inside the Post, their graphics relayed that 74 percent of the sample felt the IRS targeting was “inappropriate.”'

WaPo Furthers Liberal Media’s ‘Racist’ Narrative at RNC: ‘Republican Party is White, Aging, & Dying Off’
By Ryan Robertson | August 30, 2012 | 4:39 PM EDT

The liberal media can’t seem to help themselves. While counter-arguments are occasionally acknowledged, most journalists of the progressive persuasion are not interested in fair and balanced coverage of politics. Facts and figures are seemingly subjective in the whole scheme of things. Severely limited studies and polls seem to provide them with all the information they need. Oh, and almost everything is racist.

The Washington Post has been one of most reliable offenders, as far as daily publications are concerned. For example, Rosalind Helderman, Jon Cohen and Aaron Blake collaborated on a report that was published today suggesting the “Republican Party base is white, aging and dying off.” This is according to an “extensive analysis" by David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

WashPost Buries Most of the Numbers Off Page One on Bad Obama Poll
By Tim Graham | March 12, 2012 | 7:07 AM EDT

Monday's Washington Post announces their new poll with ABC News with the headline "As gasoline prices rise, president's ratings fall." Reporters Dan Balz and Jon Cohen announce the bad news upfront that "a record number of Americans now give the president 'strongly' negative reviews" on the economy. But you'd have to turn inside for the real numbers, as the reporters clear their throats about the overall trends among the "steadily brightening employment picture."

The Post did note on the front page that "nearly two-thirds" of respondents disapproved of Obama's handling of gas prices (65 percent disapprove, 26 percent approve). On the Post website Monday morning, they encouraged people to read the comments, as they normally do, but with this pro-Obama commenter headline: “1,300+ comments: 'How exactly are rising gas prices Obama's fault?’”

WashPost Notes Voter Discontent with Washington, Fails to Focus on 70% Believing Obama Has Failed or Made Things Worse
By Ken Shepherd | August 11, 2011 | 4:52 PM EDT

A new Washington Post poll finds, among other things, that a full 70 percent of Americans either believe Barack Obama has "tried but failed" to solve "the major problems facing the country" or has actually "made problems worse." That compares, by the way, with 71 percent of Americans in a December 2008 Pew Center poll who thought the same of outgoing President Bush.

Yet in analyzing the polling data, Post staffers Jon Cohen and Dan Balz buried bad news for the president deep in their page A1 August 11 article and suggested the sour view Americans have on the Congress was the bigger story for the upcoming election season (emphasis mine):

 

Burying the Bad News: Obama Still Unliked by 'Non-College Whites'
By Tim Graham | February 22, 2011 | 8:08 AM EST

A new survey by The Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School for Public Health found dire news for Democrats: “When asked which party better understands the economic problems that people in the country are having, non-college whites side with the Republicans by a 14-point margin.”

That news is so uncomfortable for media liberals that the Post put that sentence in paragraph 15 of a story they placed on page A-2. The headline on this story by Jon Cohen and Dan Balz was “Non-college whites gloomy about economy: Group is more pessimistic than those with degrees, poll finds.” It wasn't “Non-college whites don't like Obama economic policies.” There's also that finding, in paragraph 13:

WaPo Hypes Poll Showing 'Many Still Skeptical of GOP'; Still Neglects to Report Poll Showing Disapproval of ObamaCare
By Ken Shepherd | December 15, 2010 | 11:00 AM EST

Yesterday my colleague Tim Graham noted how the Washington Post failed to report its most recent ABCNews-Washington Post opinion poll on President Obama's signature health care overhaul legislation.

This was despite the fact that the poll showed ObamaCare had fallen to "the lowest level of popularity ever" as ABC reporter Jake Tapper observed.

Today the Post continued to keep its poll findings from the print edition.

Of course, the Post was careful to front-page a story by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen on how, "In poll, many [are] still skeptical of GOP."

Amazing: WaPo Fails to Publish Own Poll on ObamaCare's Lowest Popularity Ever
By Tim Graham | December 14, 2010 | 1:55 PM EST

A new ABC-Washington Post poll found ObamaCare sunk to its lowest popularity yet: 52 percent opposed, and only 43 percent in favor. ABC mentioned the poll without fanfare at the end of a Jake Tapper report on Monday’s World News, and Tapper added this was the health law's "lowest level of popularity ever." But Tuesday’s Washington Post reported not one sentence on the poll in the paper – even as they reported in the paper that the same survey found Obama’s tax-and-unemployment-compensation deal has “broad bipartisan support.”

This is the same Post that highlighted the news on Page One on October 20, 2009, when they found a “clear majority” in favor of a socialist “public option” -- amid charges they oversampled Democrats. 

The numbers weren't excluded because they arrived late. The Post poll numbers went up on the website yesterday at about 1 pm, under the headline “Health care opponents divided on repeal.” That obscured the numbers a bit, as Cohen found a “slim majority” (not a “clear majority”?) currently oppose ObamaCare: 

WaPo Tries to Bury Their Own Depressing Poll Numbers for Dems Off the Front Page
By Tim Graham | September 7, 2010 | 8:34 AM EDT

The Washington Post doesn't avoid the bad news for Democrats on Tuesday's front page, but it noticeably tried to hide the worst of it. The headline on the new ABC/Post poll was "Republicans making gains ahead of midterm elections; parties nearly even on trust; Obama's overall rating is at new low, poll finds."

There is no graphic illustration of any poll result -- unlike their misleading GOP-maligning July 13 story. The Post did announce that inside their polls merely "shows Republicans with the edge as independents slide away from the Democrats." But the story by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen saved all the most depressing numbers for inside the paper on A5:

-- Republicans lead Democrats 47 to 45 percent on the basic ballot question, but "among those most likely to vote this fall, the Republican advantage swells to 53 percent to the Democrats' 40 percent."

WaPo Laments False Rumor Obama's a Muslim: He's Been a 'Diligent and Personally Committed' Christian?
By Tim Graham | August 19, 2010 | 8:36 AM EDT
Thursday's Washington Post reports that a new poll by the Pew Research Center found “The number of Americans who believe – wrongly – that President Obama is a Muslim has increased significantly since his inauguration and now account for nearly 20 percent of the nation's population.” Team Obama quickly blamed “'misinformation campaigns' by the president's opponents.” The Post's Jon Cohen and Michael D. Shear just pass that along without any specifics.

But what's really shaky is the story's accuser, Obama “faith adviser” Joshua DuBois, trying to tout how the president is deeply, “diligently” Christian, when the president is much more diligent at golfing than he is at church attendance. The number of Sunday church services Obama has attended since the Inauguration doesn't get beyond counting on one hand, even bypassing the pews at Christmas.

Numerous liberal outlets have giddily promoted that Obama is a Christian because he receives little religious and inspirational quotes on his BlackBerry from his adviser DuBois. (Matt Lauer: “It's spirituality meets high-tech! That's pretty good!”) They also routinely careen around the idea that if Obama is a Christian, he came to Jesus by being for two decades a Jeremiah Wright we-deserved-9/11 Christian. Cohen and Shear naturally avoided that:

WaPo Insists GOP Lacks Confidence of 72 Percent; But 43 Percent Said They Had 'Some'
By Tim Graham | July 13, 2010 | 1:12 PM EDT

The Washington Post announced bad news for its largely liberal readers in its poll Tuesday morning. The headline said "6 in 10 Americans lack faith in Obama: Congress still held in lower esteem, but poll shows gap narrowing." Those who read the story would wait until the end of paragraph six (just before the jump) to get this liberal-haunting number: "Those most likely to vote in the midterms prefer the GOP over continued Democratic rule by a sizable margin of 56 percent to 41 percent."

But if the Post reader skipped the gray text and went just for the graphics, they’d get the impression that Republicans are worse off than the Democrats: they’d see asked "how much confidence do you have" in the parties, they showed Obama’s "lack faith" number at 58 percent, Democrats in Congress at 68 percent, and Republicans at 72 percent.

But wait: in parentheses it says "percent of voters saying 'just some' or 'none'". (That wasn't bolded in the paper, as it is on the website.) Here’s the rub: deep in the Post's data (question 3), it shows Republicans "just some" number was 43 percent and "none" was 29 percent, while Democrats "just some" number was 35 percent and "none" was 32 percent. So portraying the Republican standing as "worse" than the Democrats (complete with trouble-red emphasis) is misleading at best.

WaPo Buries Its Own Poll Showing 'Public Cooling to Health-Care Reform'
By Tim Graham | December 16, 2009 | 8:26 AM EST

Eight weeks ago, The Washington Post topped its own front-page with its own ABC-Washington Post poll announcing that the public strongly favored a "public option" in health care, by 57 to 40 percent. Their latest poll is much worse: "Negatives abound in poll," read the subhead. So it was buried on page 6 Wednesday.

Is the WaPo Stuffing Its Own Ballot Box for the 'Public Option'?
By Tim Graham | October 21, 2009 | 7:51 AM EDT

The Washington Post touted a new poll on Tuesday that popular support is increasing for a government-run "public option" health care system – just as liberal Democrats try to push that into the Senate Finance Committee bill. The headline was "Public option gains support: Clear majority now backs plan." So it’s not surprising, as Ed Morrissey found at Hot Air, that the Post is stuffing its poll sample with a few extra Democrats:

The sampling comprises 33% Democrats, as opposed to only 20% Republicans. That thirteen-point spread is two points larger than their September polling, at 32%/21%. More tellingly, it’s significantly larger than their Election Day sample, which included 35% Democrats to 26% Republicans for a gap of nine points, about a third smaller than the gap in this poll. Of course, that’s when they were more concerned about accuracy over political points of view.

The Post’s poll (illustrated by a chart) found respondents favored a public option "to compete with" private insurance by a margin of 57 to 40 percent. But even with the polling sample tilted toward the Democrats, some less favorable findings weren’t in the headline, as Dan Balz and Jon Cohen reported: