In my post just now, I noted the irony of David Brooks lamenting the "media and activist cocoon" liberals reside in, even as he himself demonstrated having apparently no idea what actual liberals feel about Obama. Pot and kettle came to mind.
It's worth noting, though, that Brooks also derided liberals relying on "their own cherry-picking pollsters" to confirm their biases, before proceeding to ... cherry-pick poll numbers to confirm his biases. Brooks:
Is that really true? Lower approval ratings than Darth Cheney? Well, kinda ...
Cheney is out of office, so there are no more approval ratings, which measure how people consider an elected politician to be doing his job, for him. There's only favourability ratings, which measure how people view that politician as a person. For Pelosi, there's a smattering of both types of polls. (In general, favourability ratings tend to be higher than approval ratings, even for the same person).
I found four recent polls that asked about both Cheney and Pelosi - three of them asking the favourability question on both, and one (CNN) asking about favourability for Cheney and job approval for Pelosi. Turns out that it's true that she has lower approval ratings ... but she also has lower disapproval ratings. Because she is less well known and fewer people have an opinion about her one way or another. In three of the four polls, the net balance is better for Pelosi than for Cheney; in the fourth poll (by NBC/WSJ), they come out equally badly.
Less impopular than Cheney - 't aint much to be proud of. But it's also the opposite of what Brooks asserts.
Pelosi vs Cheney
| Favourable | Unfavourable | Net | |
| Approve | Disapprove | ||
| NBC/WSJ 6/12-15 | |||
| Nancy Pelosi | 24 | 46 | -22 |
| Dick Cheney | 26 | 48 | -22 |
| Fox, 6/9-10 | |||
| Nancy Pelosi | 29 | 47 | -18 |
| Dick Cheney | 34 | 57 | -23 |
| Hotline, 6/4-7 | |||
| Nancy Pelosi | 32 | 43 | -11 |
| Dick Cheney | 36 | 53 | -17 |
| CNN, 5/14-17 | |||
| Nancy Pelosi | 39 | 48 | -9 |
| Dick Cheney | 37 | 55 | -18 |
