About that BBC poll

When I see a poll that says anything anymore, the first thing I want to see are the questions and the actual resutls.

That BBC poll on the world, in which they declared that the world thinks badly of Israel and the United States, can be found in this PDF. It’s necessary to look at the poll, because the BBC studiously buried the statistic that 57% of Americans think the U.S. has a positive influence in the world in a separate article on the American responses. I smell a rat with a British accent.

For instance, here’s what they did to that very vital first question:

M1At. Please tell me if you think each of the following are having a mainly positive or mainly negative influence in the world: ct) The United States

And here are the breakdowns:

Four percent of Americans think that the answer depends on circumstances, nine percent say neither, and one percent has no opinion. That makes a huge difference when you look again at the question. (And I just love how they had an average with and without the US added in; the percentage changed little due to, duh, the law of averages.)

It’s a cooked poll that really says nothing new. Even the BBC admits it.

In general, opinion seems to divide along the traditional fault lines of international politics.

Israel is viewed most negatively in the Muslim countries of the Middle East, although also in Europe.

Iran is viewed most positively in the Muslim world.

Japan is generally viewed positively, except in China and South Korea.

The EU similarly gets good marks, except most notably in Turkey, and also in parts of the Middle East.

So the point of putting out an article that says nothing new is…?

Wait. It bashes America and Israel. Of course it has a point.

I downloaded the full poll and methodology PDFs. More later.