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71% Think Prop 8 is Unconstitutional – Source: Fox News
Is it possible that even the center-right tilting viewing audience of Fox news programs is also open to significant upgrades of gay civil rights? That is what a surprising new, unscientific survey of a Fox web audience seems to be showing.
With pleasure, I direct you to this interesting Fox News online poll in which at the time of this posting 300,499 votes had been cast.
The poll poses the following issue and question:
A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Prop. 8, California’s gay marriage ban is unconstitutional. Do you agree with the judge’s decision?
Kudos to Fox for asking this important question straightforwardly.
Although Fox notes that this is not a scientific poll, the response thus far strongly affirms the decision by Judge Vaughn Walker to strike down the California anti-same sex marriage Proposition 8.
Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has now filed a brief with the courts calling for gay marriages to immediately resume.
Here were the responses to the Fox poll at post time:
Yes — Prop. 8 violates the Constitution. 71.1% (213,547 votes)
No — Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman. I don’t care what the judge thinks about the Constitution. 24.8% (74,455 votes)
I’m not sure but shouldn’t the voters views count for something? 3.6% (10,812 votes)
Other (leave a comment). 0.6% (1,685 votes)
Total Votes: 300,499
Updated totals shown in above image.
I have mixed feelings about online polls, but I voted in this one.
No matter which side of the issue you find yourself on, I’d encourage you to vote in this poll given the very large number of participants (you can only vote once).
– Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note. Clemons can be followed on Twitter @SCClemons
Original Article: Steve Clemons: Fox News Online Poll Shows 71% View Anti-Gay Marriage Prop 8 as Unconstitutional – The Huffington Post
Even if this is a nationwide poll there’s no way the rest of the country thinks prop 8 is unconstitutional and only a minority of voters in liberal California thinks it is.
So what this means is either people are extremely fickle and will change their views at the drop of a hat, or that people knowingly go to the polls to vote for things they think are unconstitutional hoping that the judges won’t notice!
Seriously, what ever happened to respecting the Constitution! If you think something is unconstitutional, even if you think it’s a good idea DON’T DO IT! If it’s unconstitutional(federally) it requires a federal amendment. Likewise if it’s unconstitutional on the state level it requires a constitutional revision rather than an amendment(in California simple amendments are passed by majority, but a constitutional revision that changes something already in the constitution requires a more complicated process).
We have Constitutions for a reason! To keep the government responsible and in check. Even though it’s the job of the courts to uphold the Constitution citizens and government officials should not vote for laws they think are unconstitutional just because they think they can get away with it in court. No wonder we’re getting blatantly unconstitutional laws like the PATRIOT ACT, domestic spying, and GITMO. If some policy that is unconstitutional is really that important a responsible citizen or politician should say “I’m voting no but only because I think this would be unconstitutional. We need to pass an amendment.”
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Don’t care about this poll..we should not judge any kind of relationships between a man/women and man/man or women/women. Be who you are..don’t care for this poll. Fox News wanted to advice on the judge ruling. Let’s hope the Judge does not have a gay in his family. Then he/she will know how it feel to have one. They are great gay people where I live.
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This poll will be very swayed because I doubt alot of mormons will show up here ;). I realize that that is the reason that prop 8 passed in the first place but it should be noted that this poll is going to be pushed to one side just as much as that was.
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I thought online polls were for crashing? Isn’t that the point of them?
Yeah I helped. Always do :-)
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Noobs. Internet polls are attacked by bots and blog swarms. The future is truly a wondrous place.
A sufficiently determined/skilled/influential non-noob can tilt an internet poll any way he likes.
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I guarantee you the FOX listener did not read the question… All they saw was “is it unconstitutional”… Their answer… YES! We must remember we are dealing with people who find ti extremely difficult to be even moderately observant!
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First, calling Fox’ audience “center-right” is questionable. Obama is “center-right” and they think he’s a socialist. (Partly because they’re squarely on the right, partly because of the brainwashing) Second, I was going to point out that these simple-minded folk lapping up the Fox Kool-aid probably didn’t understand the question, but I see Dan has beaten me to that point. And this isn’t Fox-bashing empty rhetoric– I really do think there was a lot of confusion. I meet them all the time– for the most part these really are not bright people.
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I’m afraid I agree with Dan — 71% that’s far to intelligent for Fox viewers. They either got the question wrong and just gave a knee jerk reaction against the judge (Most conservatives view judges as subversives) Or possibly the people who care most about this issue – gays – flooded the survey with their own calls. Or maybe the liberals are starting to hack polls the way conservatives have for years. Take your pick of those explanations, or come up with one of your own. But you can be sure Fox Viewers as a whole don’t support gay marriage.
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And the Right Wing psychos become even more marginalized.
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A reminder to you cons who claim to understand this country.
My rights and your rights are not decided by popular vote or the wishes of any religious sect, cult or organization
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I love it when online communities wreak havoc on this kind of stuff… I’m sure it would have been a slam dunk for Fox without the intervention of Anon. Easy way to lightly embarrass the imbeciles. I loved when Fox was calling for Photoshops of Obama and Something Awful got a bunch of extremely satirical ones into the official display until Fox found out and shut it down
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LMAO at you repubes/AmericanTaliban members.
Average Faux Sheeple says: This cant be right… No way. There are way more bigots than rational people. The fix must be in if the poll says gays have the same rights as the rest of us.
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even if 4chan “raided” the poll, so what? Are they not people who have opinions? Would a 4chan user who was for prop 8 vote against it just because his internet overlords asked him/her to?
If Fox could only rustle up 85K votes FOR prop 8, that is telling in and of itself.
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Yeah sure. Have another sour grape.
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Online polls are just as accurate as the Bible.
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Omar Reply:
August 9th, 2010 at 10:06 am
@Anon,
I agree :) also as accurate as other sacred books/writing :)
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Steve Clemons can’t be that much of an idiot to believe anything in an online poll. Fox viewers are as homophobic as ever. We crashed this one good!!!
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This was probably a raid by 4channers.
Any strange online polls like this usually are.
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people understood the question and who cares if it was hijacked. people said what they thought.
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That poll was subject to bots, to huge audiences of pharyngula readers, and to all sorts of abuse. Online polls are always meaningless. No exceptions.
That being said – Vaughn Walker’s judgment explains clearly and convincingly that proposition 8 violated the 14th amendment.
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It was a combination of 4chan and Pharyngula. The Pharyngulites love messing up polls like this for two reasons: first, it wrecks the right-wing nutters’ attempts to make appeals to the majority, and seconds, it proves to them that online polls are NOT an accurate means of gauging public opinion.
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Bollocks. The vast majority of this country wants to make its own decisions in their own lives – whether it be financial, spiritual or sexual. It’s only a very small, very vocal minority (that gets way WAY too much airtime, in my opinion) that wishes to control other people’s behavior based on selective and misreadings of their stupid spiritual “textbook”.
Even if the bible should be used to dictate modern American behavior – which it very obviously should not – the book as a whole is a psychotic mashup of constantly-broken rules.
Ever eat a shrimp, Christians? Yes? THEN SHUT UP AND LET OUR CITIZENS HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS.
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It just shows how worthless these online polls are. Even though it was pharyngulated and 4chan-ulated, those were probably honest answers. But still of no value for an opinion on anything. The problem is that it may just support someone’s biases. This is just another example of inumeracy.
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Actually, I’m certain that these results were due to the fact that bloggers on tumblr.com found it and all voted for the liberal position.
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Yeah… just to echo the above, this survey got hit not only by 4chan, but also by Pharyngula (my own involvement came via Pharyngula) and other sites. Either one of those would skew the results by itself, but together? … Yeah. After that, there was really nothing that could be done for the ‘no’ column, not even after the other side started using bots to try to add votes to the ‘no’ column. :P
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Between 4chan and Pharyngula this pool was destroyed.
Link to Pharyngula
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/oops_1.php
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Yeah 4chan hacked this poll, like they do with many others (Time person of the year, Justin Beiber to North Korea). Whoever wrote this article is either seriously uneducated about the internet or just using this poll to push his own agenda, or both. Good fact-checking though.
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“online poll”
“not a scientific poll”
This means it’s absolutely, totally worthless. Please remember that in the future.
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4chan did not really tamper with the poll. They just informed readers that it existed. And people voted from there.
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Yeah, sorry, but that poll was highjacked to prove a point: online polls are stupid and unreliable.
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I strongly suspect that most of that 71% were not Fox viewers. The polls started heavily lopsided the other way, and only swung toward sanity after multiple poll-jacking compaigns.
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All online polls and phone-in polls are useless, no matter what they seem to show. That’s why they’re called “unscientific”: they contain no usable information at all. When you say the results are “interesting,” you’re interested in nothing. Just because you like the (illusory) “result” doesn’t make it mean anything.
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Either way, the poll came up with the right results.
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4chan and Pharyngula crashed it.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/oops_1.php
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Only the foolish or desperate cite internet polls as a source…
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The poll was attacked by PZ Myers and his army of minions over at Pharyngula.
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That survey got hit by Pharyngula AND 4chan – it is as busted as a poll can possibly be.
This kind of thing is EXACTLY why PZ and the Pharyngulites crash polls: to show how worthless they are. If a Faux News internet poll showed that their viewers hate gays, it means nothing. If the poll showed that they all loved having gay sex, it’d STILL mean nothing.
Internet polls are worthless – that’s why they’re called “unscientific”.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/oops_1.php
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We pharyngulated that. Sorry.
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If you don’t agree with the judgment, you probably didn’t read it. Not that I would expect any of you neocon closet cases to actually read it once you heard the summary. You claim that the dems are ruining the country, but were silent when the patriot act came out under Bush and hear your southern redneck republicans talk about repealing the 14th amendment. You are truly sheeple. Beg to keep the bush taxcuts for the rich alive and unpaid for, but then start talking deficit when it comes to extending unemployment. Keep licking the boots of your masters guys..
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i hate to break it to you but this poll was hijacked by a few different websites, mainly 4chan. i know because i was involved. when we first started, the “no” option was ahead by 10 percentage points.
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That survey was pharyngulated.
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Unfortunately, I think it just means that 71% of respondents didn’t understand the question.
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Nad Reply:
August 8th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
@Dan, “Did Judge make right call in gay marriage case?” How is that question hard to understand?
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4chan raided the poll and gave the “Yes” vote a landslide win.
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