Media Shocker: ‘This Week’ Leads With New Poll Showing GOP Gaining Strength

In a piece early Sunday morning concerning a new Washington Post/ABC News poll showing the Republicans gaining strength heading into Tuesday’s elections, I said that it would be interesting to see how this would be covered, “especially by ABC tomorrow on ‘This Week’ and ‘World News Tonight.’” Well, we have the answer on the former, and you better sit down because it’s quite shocking: “This Week” actually began its program this morning with this poll.

After the teaser, George Stephanopoulos introduced “World News Tonight” anchor Charles Gibson, and after some pleasantries said: “But first, a little election news this morning. We have a new poll out this morning, an ABC poll, it shows the race has tightened.”

Gibson took the baton:

There is a new ABC poll, and I think it may provide some solace for the Republicans. They have not had much good polling news recently. And, our indications are that things could be tightening. Now, you can always take these national polls with a grain of salt, because they don’t look at it district by district or state by state. But in terms of what likely voters’ preferences are in House races (with graphic on screen), it shows that the Democrats are favored by 51 percent of the likely voters, and Republicans by 45 percent. Now that’s considerably tighter than where we were in October when it was 55-41. So, that obviously would be good news for the Republicans.

Shocking. Somebody pinch me. Sadly, Gibson and Stephanopoulos didn’t discuss the finding in this poll that respondents rated Democrats and Republicans equally as to who they trust to handle conditions in Iraq. Regardless, this was an amazing way for “This Week” to start its final program before Election Day.