{"id":40802236170,"date":"2010-08-30T13:54:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T17:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2010\/08\/30\/bullying-leader-or-leading-bully\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T11:22:06","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T16:22:06","slug":"bullying-leader-or-leading-bully","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2010\/08\/30\/bullying-leader-or-leading-bully\/","title":{"rendered":"Bullying Leader or Leading Bully?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ<\/strong><\/i><\/p>\n

Much has been made of New Jersey Governor Christ Christie\u2019s initial harangue over the state\u2019s loss of Race to the Top funds.\u00a0 The governor lambasted federal bureaucrats and the Obama administration for not accepting revised information, although subsequent evidence indicates that such information was never provided by the state.<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s political opponents say this incident was just another manifestation of Christie\u2019s bullying personality.\u00a0 Those more sympathetic see the governor\u2019s self-titled \u201crants\u201d as the product of a refreshing leadership style.<\/p>\n

There is little doubt that Chris Christie approaches his job with a much different style than his predecessors.\u00a0 One question on the punditry\u2019s mind is how the public perceives this style.\u00a0 Is Christie seen as a leader or a bully?<\/p>\n

The Quinnipiac University Poll attempted to address this question by asking voters straight out:\u00a0 \u201cWould you describe Governor Christie as being more of a bully or more of a leader?\u201d\u00a0 Their June poll found New Jersey voters split at 44% for leader and 43% for bully.\u00a0 By August, opinion had shifted to 51% leader and 39% bully.<\/p>\n

One striking thing about those numbers is how closely they match the governor\u2019s overall job performance rating, which was 44% approve to 43% disapprove in the June poll and 51% approve to 36% disapprove in August.\u00a0 In fact, the results are nearly identical.<\/p>\n

The folks at Quinnipiac were kind enough to provide additional information on the job approval and leader\/bully questions from the August poll.\u00a0 Their results show that fully 86% of those who approved of Christie\u2019s job performance called him a leader (just 5% chose bully) and 84% of those who disapproved of Christie saw him as a bully (only 10% chose leader).\u00a0 That\u2019s a very high correlation.<\/p>\n

The morning the June poll was released, New Jersey 101.5 radio host Jim Gearhart discussed it on the air. \u00a0One caller identified himself as a participant in the Quinnipiac poll.\u00a0 He thought that a little bullying on the governor\u2019s part was actually a good thing for the state.\u00a0 However, the caller chose \u201cleader\u201d in response to the poll question because he felt that the other answer would be interpreted as a negative opinion of the governor.<\/p>\n

This participant\u2019s choice in response is what some pollsters call an \u201cexpressed belief\u201d \u2013 that is, answering a poll question to send a message rather than answering it literally.\u00a0 Based on the strong correlation between the approve\/disapprove question and leader\/bully question, this one participant was probably not alone.<\/p>\n

[Coincidentally, ABC News pollster Gary Langer just posted a blog on this concept with regard to public \u201cbelief\u201d that Barack Obama is Muslim.]<\/p>\n

Another concern that Jim Gearhart raised that morning is whether \u201cleader\u201d and \u201cbully\u201d are necessarily mutually exclusive concepts for voters.\u00a0 We can\u2019t tell from the Quinnipiac poll because the choice was presented as \u201ceither\/or.\u201d\u00a0 However, the Eagleton-Rutgers Poll also released results this month which shed some light on the leader versus bully debate.<\/p>\n

Eagleton-Rutgers presented poll participants with eight different terms and asked them to rate how well each describes Governor Christie (i.e. very, somewhat, or not at all well).\u00a0 Among those terms were \u201cStrong Leader\u201d and \u201cBully.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their results found that 36% of New Jersey voters felt that strong leader describes Christie very well and another 34% somewhat well \u2013 a total of 70%.\u00a0 On the other hand, 25% said bully describes the governor very well and 24% somewhat well \u2013 a total of 49%.<\/p>\n

Obviously, there must be some overlap between the two.\u00a0 Dave Redlawsk at Eagleton was kind enough to provide me more details on his poll.\u00a0 Just 4% of New Jersey voters think that both strong leader and bully describe Christie very well<\/em>.\u00a0 Interestingly, this 4% result is identical to the percentage of participants in the Quinnipiac poll who both approved of Christie\u2019s job performance and <\/em>saw him as more of a bully than a leader.<\/p>\n

If we expand our pool to those who feel that both characteristics (leader and bully) are at least somewhat<\/em> apt descriptions of the governor, we get up to just around 30% of all participants in the Eagleton poll.<\/p>\n

This suggests that the majority of New Jersey voters see \u201cleader\u201d and \u201cbully\u201d as mutually exclusive concepts when it comes to assessing their governor.\u00a0 Whether this exclusion is tied intrinsically to one\u2019s overall opinion of the governor or is truly a difference in the underlying concepts is a matter of debate.<\/p>\n

The cautionary tale here is that the meaning of poll questions may be different for those of us who write the questions than it is for those who answer them.\u00a0 Bottom line:\u00a0 Be careful of taking the results of poll questions too literally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ Much has been made of New Jersey Governor Christ Christie\u2019s initial harangue over the state\u2019s loss of Race to the Top funds.\u00a0 The governor lambasted federal bureaucrats and the Obama administration for not accepting revised information, although subsequent evidence indicates that such information was never provided by the state. The governor\u2019s political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":939,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40802236170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/939"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802236170"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802246369,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236170\/revisions\/40802246369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802236170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802236170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802236170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}