Frank Luntz Returns With His Skewed Focus Group, This Time To Smear Health Care Reform Bill Reconciliation
Reported by Ellen - March 6, 2010 -
Frank Luntz once again appeared on Hannity Thursday night (3/4/10) with his skewed focus group that he tried to pass off as fair. As we have previously noted, Luntz conducted a focus group a week ago that he repeatedly described, as he did last night, as having "half McCain voters, half Barack Obama voters," without noting that it was not a representative sample of Americans. A representative sample would have comprised 53% Obama voters to 46% for McCain. Instead, the so called "half McCain voters" actually included a reverse make up of 54% McCain voters (and 46% for Obama) because Luntz revealed in one of his earlier appearances that the group really consisted of 13 McCain voters to 11 Obama voters. Not asked or answered in any of the segments I've seen about this same focus group (three, so far) is whether or not the Obama voters were actually Democrats, as Luntz suggested, or merely Obama-voting Republicans or independents. Judging from the GOP talking points the group always repeats and the suspicious paucity of Democratic viewpoints and people of color, I can't help but suspect that the number of Republicans outweighed Democrats even more than Luntz wanted the Fox News viewers to think. As Media Matters noted about this clip, when the group began to express support for passing health care reform via reconciliation, Luntz changed the wording of the question to include the term "nuclear option" and got different results. Video after the jump.
This clip from Media Matters is an only an excerpt and it does include an opposing viewpoint. Unfortunately, my recorder was not working last night but you can see that in the other two appearances Luntz made with this focus group, GOP soundbites predominated.
