Friday, December 26, 2008

1,008 adults pick Obama as "most admired man"

It's supposedly a huge surprise that 1008 adults when called picked President elect Barack Obama as as the man they admire most in the world.

Anyone bother to look at the choices?

What man living today do you admire most?
1. Barack Obama 32%
2. George W. Bush 5%
3. John McCain 3%
4. Pope Benedict XVI* 2%
Billy Graham 2%
Bill Clinton 2%

What woman living today do you admire most?
1. Hillary Clinton 20%
2. Sarah Palin 11%
3. Oprah Winfrey 8%
4. Condoleezza Rice 7%
5. Michelle Obama 3%

I'm sure Oprah's pretty pissed to have come under both Clinton and Palin...But the big news is that the numbers don't even add up when you actually go to the Gallup site and see what they have shared:



Only 19% of those who didn't pick Obama have listed choices, which means, 68% picked someone other than Obama and 80% picked someone other than Clinton...

What's also interesting is the history and how far Oprah has dropped:
PRINCETON, NJ -- For the sixth year in a row, President George W. Bush is the most admired man and Sen. Hillary Clinton the most admired woman in Gallup's annual survey. But neither winner had a very decisive win this year, with former President Bill Clinton nearly tying Bush and Hillary Clinton barely topping talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. This is the seventh time Bush has been most admired man and the 12th time Clinton has been most admired woman.


Obama's 32% still tops Bush's 28% from 2002, and doesn't top Bush's 39% in 2001, but it puts it into a bit more perspective for those interested in perspective...It's funny that Bill Clinton's popularity rose each year of the Bush presidency until this year and that Al Gore did not even make the list for several years with last year receiving more than Obama...

7 comments:

Unknown said...

If you want to go back even farther beyond 2002, this link has from 2000 to 1993.

Cyberseaer said...

Wow! The most admired people are the ones who were in the news the most this year! Yuck! And what has Obama done, other than win a contest, to be most admired? He can speak well?

Each and every year, the American public just keeps repeating what the media spoon feeds them. What a bunch of lemmings we, as a people, have become. So much for the free thinkers of the 1960s who were supposed to set us free from the machine. Now they have become the machine and it seems they have may it worst.

What is even worst than that is my generation and the others to follow are apathic to this worsening and weaking of the USA. Let China take over, as long as we have our cable, our video console games, and out internet connections, we will be fine. In less than a hundred years, we will turn into the humans in Wall-E.

Unknown said...

What I found interesting was year after year they had to take the top two choices to pick a man and a woman who never got the majority of votes, then they declare that person "Most admired".

It's a farce. More people picked someone else not from their list...

It also does show the power of the media on some of the choice, but it also shows how fickle we are as a nation, until this year each year the current president was in office his numbers went down, and the president before him, his numbers went up. The "grass is always greener on the other side of the septic tank" syndrome?

Robin said...

Did people name who they truly admired or were they given a list of names to pick off of?

Unknown said...

They named two for each, so if you as an example named your husband as your top choice and Obama as your second, Obama would be used as a "top choice" for you since your first answer would have been not in the top group.

Robin said...

I'm really surprised that our Armed Forces are no where on that list.

Unknown said...

Good point Robin, perhaps that was because they had to name two men and two women rather than a group.