The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

See? B.S.!

Posted on | July 18, 2011 | 15 Comments

Ed Morrissey does an excellent evisceration of a blatantly deceptive CBS News poll:

Have Democrats leaped to an eleven-point registration advantage in the last five weeks?  In early June, a CBS News poll showed a D/R/I sample of 30/30/40, which undersampled both parties slightly in favor of independents, even weighting it to slightly favor Republicans. In their latest poll today on the debt ceiling debate, CBS offers one of its most egregious poll samples in recent memory to pursue the “public blames the GOP” meme . . .

Read the whole thing. I will add only two points that I’ve made before about how polling data is often misinterpreted:

  1. “Random adults” don’t matter in politics. Any poll on a political topic that surveys mere “adults” — as opposed to registered voters or, preferably, well-screened likely voters — is utterly worthless. People who don’t vote, don’t matter. Any poll that doesn’t make some attempt to screen out non-voters tells you nothing useful about the political landscape. And also, non-voters are more liberal than average.
  2. Early polling is always deceptive. Public opinion of political issues in July of an off-year is a poor measure of where voter sentiment will be 16 months from now on Election Day 2012.

In the most recent election eight months ago, Republicans won a historic landslide and there is no reason to believe now, in mid-July, that Americans have suddenly shifted toward the Democrats. What CBS News did with that poll is as big a lie as RatherGate, and they should be ashamed of themselves for promoting dishonest propaganda while pretending to report the news.

Category: CBS, Hot Air, Media Bias, Polls

Comments

15 Responses to “See? B.S.!”

  1. Finrod Felagund
    July 18th, 2011 @ 2:55 pm

    This is why the only pollster whose numbers I don’t immediately question is Rasmussen, because he’s very good at polling Likely Voters, which is the gold standard in predicting elections.  Pollsters who poll ‘Adults’ are incompetent, horribly biased, or both.