Brendan Nyhan

Fox polls on Obama’s smoking

Fox is known for its use of loaded and/or wacky polling questions, but the latest one is just bizarre — they polled on whether people think President Obama is “sneaking cigarettes at the White House” (PDF):

53. Barack Obama says he quit smoking cigarettes. Do you think Obama is still
sneaking cigarettes at the White House or do you think he has completely quit
smoking?

Still sneaking    Completely quit   Don’t know
Overall 37% 30 33
Democrats 37% 37 26
Republicans 38% 27 35
Independents 38% 25 36

The public has no idea what Obama is doing in private at the White House. So why should we care what they think he’s doing? I’m guessing the intent here is to suggest that Obama’s stand on the tobacco regulation legislation is hypocritical (though it’s hard to say because the Fox release doesn’t include the questions asked immediately before the one above). If so, I’m not sure why public opinion on him sneaking cigarettes would be relevant to that (silly) claim. Otherwise, it doesn’t make much sense — the Foxnews.com report on the poll just presents it as a total non sequitur.