It's hard to tell whether this was bias or sloppiness in the race to be first with a story, but USA Today has some egg on its fact this morning.
I received this USAT e-mail last night, concerning Democratice Primary results in Harry Truman's home state of Missouri:
Uh, not exactly:
In USAT's "defense" -- I have never, ever seen a race turn around like this. Hillary Clinton had a 22-point lead after well over half the vote was counted, and was up by over 50,000 votes at one point. In the final 10% or so of Missouri's counting, Obama took a ginormous percentage of the vote.
The answer, as NixGuy pointed out last night, was that St. Louis County votes came in last. On the GOP side, it wasn't nearly as radical, but John McCain also overcame a pretty big deficit, in this case to Mike Huckabee, to pull out Missouri. St. Louis County was the difference for him as well.
Cross-posted, with some revisions, at BizzyBlog.com.
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and the winner isn't...
February 6, 2008 - 12:09 ET by dubuquemanYeah, but the media were idiotic and basically dishonest to obsess over "calling" states for the Dem primary as if it were the general election, where if you win by one vote, you get all the electoral votes. It's all about the delegates, and the way the Dems do it, "winning" a state by a slim margin does not mean you won the most delegates. It might mean there is basically a tie, or it is possible that the "loser" actually got more delegates. Better to report on congressional districts rather than arbitrary state borders. The statement that Hillary "secured" Missouri is just wrong, even if their vote tally was right.
The media get so stuck into their templates that they can't break free and tell the actual story.
don't confuse the MSM with facts
February 6, 2008 - 12:23 ET by SouthJersey1953They don't care what the facts are, they just want to report the story in a way that will advance their agenda. Just see Nevada, where the MSM reports (even as of yesterday) that Hellary "won" Nevada. Well, she did, but BHO got MORE delegates in Nevada. Almost never hear THAT part of it!
Nothing but RINOs in '08 -Grrrrr
That's a Great Point
February 6, 2008 - 14:55 ET by Tom BlumerObama didn't "secure" the state either, and the Dems are so divided that the second-place finisher in many of the blowout states still got a lot of delegates. BHO is whipping HRC in urban, black, and activist areas, and vice-versa in subruban/rural, white, and traditional rank and file areas.