Bit - what about all the gloom and doom stories the media were selling that the election outcome wouldn't be known for days, if not weeks? Everything was altogether far too close for anyone to accurately decide on November 5.
Well...
We all awoke on November 6 and all of the races that mattered had been decided. It was known who was in control of the House. It was known who was in incontrovertible control of the Senate. It was known who commanded a majority of the governorships.
And the media pundits are left without their month-long story.
The doom and gloom was all media-engineered: It was reported in
The American Prowler that both major newspapers publishing 'polls' of the Coleman-Mondale race both used sample sizes less than the generally accepted 1,000 minimum normally used to attain the +- 3% margin of error!!
The
Pioneer Press/Minn. Public Radio poll, which had Mondale winning 47%-41%, had something like a 400 sample size; the
Minneapolis Star Tribune had a sample size of 960.
So when does it stop being spin or bias, and becomes out-and-out lying and electioneering???