via HinesSight
http://www.hinessight.com/Corporate TV media up to its misleading tricks again HinesSight remembers those confessions after each and every national election from the corporate TV media that they'd tried to level the playing field on election eve in order to draw viewers from both parties. For example, the MSNBC-McClatchy Polls that were hyped throughout the day on Monday showing some kind of tightening, were 3-4 days old. Polling was done before the traditional final weekend when a lot of independents make up their minds.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200611060005MSNBC's Mitchell cherry-picked polls to claim "GOP gaining ground"; CNN's O'Brien ignored own polling to claim race is "tightening"
On the November 6 edition of MSNBC's election special, Decision 2006: Battleground America, host and NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell asserted that new national polls "show Republicans gaining ground." She went on to cite three recent surveys -- from the Pew Research Center, Washington Post/ABC News, and USA Today/Gallup -- that found Republicans within four, six, and seven percentage points, respectively, of Democrats on the generic congressional ballot. But as Bloomberg Washington managing editor Al Hunt noted in response, there are several other recent polls that show Democrats with leads in excess of 15 percentage points, including those from Time, CNN, and even MSNBC's news partner, Newsweek.
(snip)
Earlier in the day, on CNN's American Morning, O'Brien cited her network's new poll showing Democrats with a 20-point lead on the generic congressional ballot. She went on to note that some individual races are "too close to call" and then began a discussion of the election with Democratic strategist James Carville and Republican strategist Charles Black by asserting that "the race is tightening." Carville responded, "How's it tightening? You have it 58 to 38. That doesn't seem to be very tight if we believe our poll -- it's at 20 points."