A lot of reporting on polls is pretty terrible, but this from Politico is kind of egregious.  See why beneath the fold...

By a large majority, voters favor President-elect Barack Obama’s wide-ranging policy prescriptions to aid the faltering economy, according to a new Politico/Allstate poll.

The survey of 1,007 registered voters conducted Dec. 27-29 showed that 79 percent of respondents favored Obama’s plan. The president-elect is advocating a $775 billion stimulus that includes a major investment in infrastructure projects and alternative energy as well as middle-class tax cuts, job training and health care reform...Respondents showed support for stricter regulations, especially in the financial sector. Sixty percent said stricter enforcement and stronger regulation of financial firms would be very effective in curbing future abuses, and 59 percent said it was important for the Obama administration to “put in place a wide range of tough new regulations on business to protect consumers.”

Politico goes on for hundreds of words about how the public is enamored with the stimulus bill and demands immediate passage, and even quotes pollster Bill Knapp--who conducted the poll for Politico--as saying that "The failure to get something done is a bigger threat than not making progress [on overall economic recovery] quickly enough".  Let's unpack the problems here one by one, shall we?

First and foremost, how likely is it that 79% of the public has an opinion on Obama's plan? Do you honestly think that people go home and weigh competing policy proposals? Of course not.  Instead they heard "Obama" and thought, "Hey, I like that guy! I approve of whatever he's for".  I would say that approval for Obama's stimulus plan is almost indistinguishable from support for Obama (which is at historic highs right now, thanks to bandwagon effects and the generally crappy national climate). 

Secondly, look at the dates this poll was conducted--December 27-29, the height of post-Christmas travel and general craziness.  Generally, it's hard to conduct reliable polling that close to the holidays--it makes it even less likely that the people you're contacting are a representative sample of the group you want to talk to.  Politico, incidentally, utterly fails to even mention this potential complication in their story--it might disrupt the narrative.

And the final problem with this story? In the same issue, they published a separate article, with the headline "Obama, Dems Face Hard Sell on Stimulus". 

“There’s a sense out there that we keep throwing more and more money at the problem,” pollster Neil Newhouse told Politico. “There’s a ton of skepticism out there whether this will make a difference.”

Everybody has an off day, but is it too much to ask that the right hand know what the left hand is doing? Sheesh