Polling

Wednesday afternoon, supposed polling genius Nate Silver tweeted that "Turnout was down from 2010 in almost every state." Silver's readers and clients had better hope that Silver is usually better at counting — and analysis (HT Twitchy):

The New York Times greeted the GOP takeover of the Senate with a mix of honest and sour reporting, emphasizing "angry" voters while downplaying the ideological significance of an "expensive" campaign "stumbling" to a close, while insisting that the Democrats succeeded in hanging on to their voting base and warning Republicans "about reading too much into their victories."

While all three network morning shows on Monday covered the upcoming midterm election, only ABC's Good Morning America mentioned the real possibility of Republicans taking control of the Senate. Co-host George Stephanopoulos informed viewers: "And Republicans seem to be closing in on the six Senate seats they need to gain a majority....The forecaster Nate Silver, from FiveThirtyEight, puts their…

M.D. Kittle at Watchdog.org's Wisconsin Reporter scooped everyone covering the Badger State Governor's race on Tuesday when he reported that Democratic candidate Mary Burke's resumé is not what her campaign's web site says it is. Burke's campaign bio claims that she "played a central role in Trek’s expansion as the Director of European Operations." Kittle found "multiple former Trek executives"…

The most recent CNN/Opinion Research poll covering October 24-26 shows that 68 percent of those surveyed said that they are "very angry ... or somewhat angry ... about the way things are going in the country today," and that 60 percent are "very scared" or "somewhat scared." CNN's web coverage and the poll report presented on Jake Tapper's show today relayed that info. But, predictably, the poll…

At their debate Tuesday night, former Florida governor (2007-2010), former Republican (1974-2010), former independent (2010-2012) and current Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist got out the crying towel over why the Sunshine State's economy was so bad on his watch. He also refused to acknowledge that incumbent Republican Governor Rick Scott deserves any credit for the state economy's…

In relaying the results of their polling partnership's latest survey, Associated Press polling director Jennifer Agiesta and reporter Emily Swanson held their most important finding until their report's seventh paragraph. Despite their effort to downplay it, Matt Drudge, whose nose for genuine news is legendary, spotted it. Accordingly, his current headline screams: "POLL SHOCK: WOMEN WANT…

Elizabeth Williamson's coverage at the Wall Street Journal of the latest WSJ/NBC News poll has a very strange omission. It contains a graph showing "right track/wrong track" polling percentages heading each midterm election going back to 1990. But Williamson, while addressing why the American people feel as they do right now in larger historical context, never commented on the graph's specific…

Appearing on Friday's CBS This Morning, Republican pollster Frank Luntz reacted to the latest CBS News poll showing Americans having a "crisis of confidence" in government institutions: "The problem is that the institutions that have the greatest impact on us, the CDC, the FDA, the EPA, those that are responsible for our health and safety, are the ones that have had the biggest collapse. In fact…

The polling partnership of the Associated Press and GfK Public Affairs & Corporate Communications conducted its final pre-early voting survey of the American electorate during the five days ended September 29. It would be pretty hard to argue against the idea that the polling effort searched for answers it could use, while avoiding getting — or at least publishing — answers it wouldn't like…

On Sunday's Reliable Sources, CNN's Brian Stelter touted a disgraced former representative as a non-partisan pundit and as an expert on media bias: "Now, I could bring in two partisan commentators now to argue about the media, but I'd rather from someone who's been in the glare of the news media – someone who's all too familiar with what happens when you go from darling to bad boy – then, maybe,…

On Friday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer brought on political director and Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd to discuss the latest NBC News/Marist poll on a major American institution being rocked by scandal. It wasn't the Obama administration getting the bad press, it was the National Football League. That's right, NBC News conducted an entire poll just on the controversies surrounding the…

On Thursday morning, CBS continued to ignore key results of the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, which show President Obama’s approval rating at 40 percent and his foreign policy approval rating at only 34 percent.  In contrast, the front-page New York Times article by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Dalia Sussman included dire statistics about the President’s low domestic approval rating: “The…

On Thursday, September 18, a strange thing happened: ABC actually covered President Obama’s plummeting poll numbers. No, not ABC News, but the daytime ABC program The View which spent nearly four minutes discussing his falling poll numbers. Moderator Whoopi Goldberg proclaimed that President Obama “might be afraid…the latest approval ratings seemed to have sunk lower than George Bush's levels. …