The Reason Polls Matter

[ruggerson]

Is because they give a very public sense of momentum.

Every single Sunday news program today hyped the Newsweek and Time polls and spent half their shows discussing the "problems" with the Kerry campaign as Bush supposedly "surges" ahead.

None of them, NONE OF THEM, reported that both the Newsweek and Time polls do NOT adjust their sample for voter affiliation and that they both polled far more Republicans in their samples this time around: both surveys from the last two days were overweighted with a heavy plurality of self described Republican voters.

Additionally, NONE of the cable news channels reported this weekend on the current polls that DO adjust for party affiliation: Zogby, which currently shows only a 2% Bush lead and Rasmussen Tracking which shows, as of today, barely a 1% Bush lead. The Economist poll, out today, with far less margin of error than both Time and Newsweek, actually shows Kerry AHEAD in a three way race. Did the cable channels report it yet? Nope.

Get on the phone, email, do whatever you can do. Write CNN, MSNBC and even FoxNews and demand that they report ACCURATE polls and that they stop manufacturing false momentum for either candidate based on skewed polling data.

[dennis4868]

1. plus....

i read somewhere her at DU that Kerry had a 11 point lead in the Newsweek poll after the DNC.....is that right?

[elperromagico]

3. For the day after Kerry's speech, yes. But Newsweek combined

that poll with one before Kerry's speech and came up with the meme that "Kerry gets no real bounce from the DNC."

The media's wonderful, innit? :eyes:

[Toronto Ron]

2. Minor correction:

The Economist poll was released on Thursday morning. It will be updated every Thursday morning.

[ruggerson]

4. Thanks

Which was the day before the Time poll was released and not a single one of the cable channels covered it. It would have given great fodder for the Kerry campaign to push the notion that Bush was not getting any bounce during the convention.

[elperromagico]

5. Judy Woodruff "covered" a poll where Bush and Kerry were tied,

but only inadvertently. She thought she was still off the air.