Gallup In The Bag For Big Corporations & The.01%

Gallup Aids GOP by Misrepresenting Poll on Small Business Hiring

By Jon Perr

In a new Gallup poll released Wednesday, small business owners revealed that the lack of need for new employees (76 percent), worries over revenue (71 percent) and concern about the state of the U.S. economy (66 percent) were the top three reasons for not hiring new workers. But you'd never know that if you just glanced at Gallup's headline, which instead warned, "Health Costs, Gov't Regulations Curb Small Business Hiring." Predictably, and despite a mountain of surveys and analyses showing that weak customer demand and not "job-crushing regulations" tops small businesses' concerns, Speaker John Boehner and the conservative blogosphere are touting Gallup's misleading headline.

On Wednesday, Gallup published this table summing up the results of its latest Wells Fargo/Small Business Index survey:

Interestingly, Gallup's headline and subhead included none of the top four factors small businesses cited as reason for not hiring. Instead, the pollsters led with the fifth and sixth items found well down the list:

While Gallup has done Americans no favors by misrepresenting its own poll results, it has done a great service for Republican propagators of long-debunked talking points. As a quick glance at Republican debate transcripts shows, the 2012 GOP presidential candidates fight each other to out-repeal regulations "off the throat of small business operators." Dire warnings about "job-destroying regulations" are regularly regurgitated by Republican leaders including Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Eric Cantor.

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