Freedom Folks: Shocker! Gallup Throws "False Choice" Poll, Gets Expected Answer!

Allah at Hot Air links to a Gallup poll on amnesty with the headline:

Heart-ache: 59% support path to citizenship for illegal aliens

Well damn, we're all sunk, right?

Uh, no, not even close. The key to understanding any poll is to dig into two things, the questions and the methodology. In this poll we don't have to go past the questions, which are...

Which comes closest to your view about what government policy should be toward illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States? Should the government -- [ROTATED: deport all illegal immigrants back to their home country, allow illegal immigrants to remain in the United States in order to work, but only for a limited amount of time, or allow illegal immigrants to remain in the United States and become U.S. citizens, but only if they meet certain requirements over a period of time]?

Now, why is this a false choice poll? Perhaps because they only offer us a false choice? Could it be that simple? Why yes, yes it can.

Can you guess what the missing question might be? Here's hint from a CIS immigration study conducted shortly before the last elections...

C. Data Contradict Other Polls Showing Support for Legalization.

Several advocacy groups and even some media outlets have released polls showing support for legalizing current illegals. However, those polls often gave voters a very limited choice between large scale deportations or earned legalization. This survey also finds some support for earned legalization. However, when given the third choice of across-the-board enforcement with the goal of causing illegals to go home on their own (which is the basis of the bill passed by the U.S. House), the public strongly favored this "attrition strategy" over mass deportations or earned legalizations.

By only offering the extremes i.e. "mass deportations" vs. "various flavors of amnesty" the respondents are not given the choice of increased enforcement and an attrition strategy. This is what's known in the business as a "push poll," or a poll designed to achieve a predetermined response.

Expect to see a lot more push polls just like this in an attempt to soften the electorate up for they hope will be an amnesty season. Remember, they wouldn't feel the need to "shade" the findings in this way if they were confident of their position. They're not, not even close. The elite haircuts are well aware that most sane folks in this country (Hannitized excluded of course!) hate amnesty with a white hot passion. Or did you think the Republican Party was magically inoculated with courage last summer? Or that Democrats suddenly realized that borders and law enforcement matter?

You can learn a lot about what the elites really think simply by paying attention to how poll questions are phrased and in some cases, even more importantly, by what they don't ask. This poll tells me that they have incredibly soft internal numbers for their amnesty dance and they are trying desperately to spin things to make it seem as though all the cool kids support amnesty.

Only problem? It's not true and it's not getting truer any time soon.