On Glenn Beck, Shapiro misrepresented NY Times poll's Obama findings

On the June 28 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, conservative columnist Ben Shapiro claimed that "the funniest thing about" a June 15-23 New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll of 17- to 29-year-olds "was the idea that people were looking very closely at" the 2008 presidential race. According to Shapiro: "[Y]ou had a poll question about whether people thought that they would vote for someone who had used cocaine, and they said, by vast majorities, no. And yet, they said the candidate they were most enamored of was Barack Obama, who has admitted to using cocaine. So, clearly, they're not following all that closely." But Shapiro misrepresented the first poll question he referenced: It did not ask whether the respondent would personally vote for a candidate who admitted to having used cocaine; it asked whether the respondent thought "most people you know would vote for a presidential candidate who has ever used cocaine." [Emphasis added.]

The poll found that 18 percent of respondents "feel enthusiastic about" Obama -- more than any other candidate -- and that 41 percent have a favorable opinion of him. On the question of whether respondents thought "most people" they knew "would vote for a presidential candidate who has ever used cocaine," the poll found that 74 percent said they thought most people would not. Contrary to Shapiro's suggestion, there is no contradiction between personally supporting a candidate and also thinking that other people would not vote for that candidate.

In his memoir Dreams from My Father (Crown, 1995), Obama acknowledged that he had used cocaine as a young man, writing on Page 93 of the paperback edition: "I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though -- Mickey, my potential initiator, had been just a little too eager for me to go through with that."

From the June 28 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck:

BECK: You know, I love this. I mean, this is The New York Times looking for a story. Fifty-eight percent say they are paying attention earlier to the presidential election. Well, we've never been doing it this early! Of course there are more people paying -- what, were they just sitting at home staring at a poster of John Kerry? I mean, come on! Things have changed.

SHAPIRO: You didn't have a lot of people who were sitting around in 1942, you know, thinking about the 1944 election. But, you know, things have changed, and things have started real early. And I thought that maybe the funniest thing about this poll was the idea that people were looking very closely at this campaign. Then you had a poll question about whether people thought that they would vote for someone who had used cocaine, and they said, by vast majorities, no. And yet they said the candidate they were most enamored of was Barack Obama, who has admitted to using cocaine. So, clearly, they're not following all that closely.

—S.S.M.