MoveOn dot what?

September 29, 2007

There was an interesting tidbit buried in the latest poll (.pdf) from Fox News. Respondents were asked whether they have a “generally favorable or unfavorable opinion” about a variety of groups and institutions. The poll included MoveOn.org in the mix and found these results:

Favorable: 11%
Unfavorable: 22%
No opinion: 11%
Never heard of: 56%

In fact, the numbers were relatively steady among self-described Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, with a majority of each saying they had no idea what MoveOn is.

The poll was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, following more than two solid weeks of intense media scrutiny of the group, and condemnations from the House, Senate, White House, and Republican presidential candidates.

It looks like the aggressive conservative push-back hasn’t amounted to much. Even now, most folks just don’t know, or don’t care, who the group is.

So many people have simply stopped following the news. When journalism is so sensationalist and noticeably biased, why watch?

  • But aren’t those the same 56%+ of people who don’t vote? Or who don’t know what Nancy Pelosi does for a living? Or who can’t find Iraq on a map? Without that context we have no way of knowing if the poll says “the aggressive conservative push-back hasn’t amounted to much” or “twice as many people who care about anything at all outside their quotidian lives have an unfavorable opinion of Moveon than favorable” or somewhere in between. If twice as many voters hate moveon than love it then the surge worked.

  • There was no context provided for MoveOn. I expect Name ID would have been higher if you they had said, “MoveOn.org, the group behind a controversial recent newspaper ad condemning general David Patraeus.” This is good news though. It does suggest that if MoveOn can keep their noses clean for a while then Republicans will be less able to use them as a club to beat Democrats with as the incident recedes — “the group behind a controversial recent newspaper ad” doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker or into a sound byte nearly as neatly as “MoveOn.org” So we’ve got that going for us. Of course if MoveOn actually learned anything from the incident then there’s even potential that some good might still come of it in the long run. But you obviously can’t learn anything from a mistake you never made, if you know what I mean. So I dunno if I’d take any bets on that last part.

  • I think Jen is right. This is a bad sign, suggesting that fewer Americans are even following the news. Fox viewers don’t tune in for facts but for biased opinion and yelling. I fear this is another sign of the “American Idolization” of our culture.

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