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 message, which is about as damning as it can get:
The graph shows that the percentage gap in 2014 between wrong track and right track is the greatest of any midterm congressional year presented. This year's gap is 40 percent; 1990 is a very close second with what appears to be either 38 percent or 39 percent.
So the gap is greater than any seen in at least 28 years, going back to 1986, which is not presented; for all we know, this year's gap may be the greatest on record. That's quite an oversight — and "Those who look at the graph can figure that out on their own" is not an acceptable comeback.
Williamson also didn't cite the significant difference in the right track/wrong track difference compared to four years ago. President Obama and Democrats suffered a "shellacking" (his word) in 2010 when the gap was about 29 percent. Since the party occupying the White House usually bears the brunt of voter dissatisfaction, and even though Congress gets very low marks from those polled (as usual), it would appear that on November 5, Obama may have to come up with a stronger word to describe how things turned out.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
