What to do when you don’t believe your own polls

So what does a major news agency do when their polling doesn’t turn out like they hoped? Don’t mention the dead heat you found with your sample and write a headline that says what you wanted to write before you took the poll;

Actually, AP’s poll shows just a 2% difference between McCain and Obama (as Joe Biden reminded me in another BFF email, Al Gore and John Kerry were 10 points ahead of George Bush at this point), but they don’t mention that. They focus on poll results on their likability rather than the actual numbers of likely voters split equally in a statistical tie. Oddly enough, Gallup shows the same tiny separation between the two.

Instead of mentioning actual numbers, AP makes unsupported statements like this;

Less than three weeks from Election Day, Obama has taken a solid lead over McCain in most national and swing-state polls. The AP-Yahoo News survey underscores the morale problem McCain faces.

Alberto dela Cruz at Babalu Blog writes (with tongue in cheek);

They prefer instead to tell the American people what percentage of voters are “excited” about their candidate and what percentage are not, and if they prefer boxers or briefs.

They are not being biased, they are just telling the American people the important news.

In another article, AP joyously celebrates that some larger newspapers support Obama – to my complete and utter surprise;

The Los Angeles Times endorses Democrat Barack Obama, calling him “educated and eloquent, sober and exciting, steady and mature.” The Washington Post calls Obama “the right man for a perilous moment.” The Chicago Tribune, endorsing a Democratic presidential nominee for the first time, expresses “tremendous confidence” in Obama’s “intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions.

I’m pretty sure none of those newspapers have supported a Republican for president in my political lifetime, so it’s really a “dog bites man” story.

Category: Politics