Everybody is talking about this poll from CNN declaring victory for Obama’s debate performance last night with an article titled “Round 1 in debates goes to Obama, poll says.”
Noah Pollak reads the fine print of the article and takes a few notes from deeper down into the specifics.
Buried way, way down at the bottom of the story — hopefully, one surmises, past the point where anyone would read — is the following:
The results may be favoring Obama simply because more Democrats than Republicans tuned in to the debate. Of the debate-watchers questioned in this poll, 41 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans and 30 percent as independents.
I’m far from being a polling expert, but this is obviously a slanted poll. A 14-point split between Republican and Democrat respondents? And what percentage of those “independents” were leaners for Obama?
That’s bad enough, but the really egregious part is CNN’s blatant reportage of opinion as fact, which allowed the creation of a news story announcing Obama’s victory.
So much for that poll. The truth is that Obama had many, many gaffes. The media won't report on those. Instead they will trumpet misleading headlines on skewed polls.
