MORE L.A. TIMES-SLIME: WISHFUL POLLING

kausfiles ^ | Oct 10, 2003 | Mickey Kaus

[publius1]

Recall Recriminations: How off was that notorious L.A. Times poll? The widely-disbelieved LAT poll of 9/12, which showed the California recall race in a virtual dead heat, assumed that white/Latino voters would amount to 82% of the total electorate and that "black/Asian/other" voters would, by implication, make up the remaining 18%. At the time, the competing Field Poll criticized this high estimate of blacks and Asians--noting that an oversampling of blacks, a highly anti-recall group, might have skewed the results in Davis' direction. Now it looks like the Field critique was accurate. According the the Edison/Mitofsky exit poll, the recall electorate was 88% white/Latino, and only 13% black/Asian/other. The Times oversampled this group by almost 40 percent. The Field Poll estimate, in contrast, appears to have been dead on. ... [Isn't this the sort of Times-bashing LAT editor John Carroll dismisses as "journalistic pornography"?--ed I don't believe the Times' junky poll was a case of deliberate distortion. But it was something. (Insufficient budget? Incompetence? Wishful thinking? Bizarrely bad luck?) So far, Times poll director Susan Pinkus hasn't seen fit to even respond to the impressive Field critique. If Carroll is intent on leveling with his readers, he might require her to at least explain the paper's seemingly strange methodology. She could start by revealing to readers what portion of the oversampled "black/Asian/other" group were blacks, and what percent were Asian, etc. ... Bonus question: How badly do you have to embarrass the paper to get fired at the LAT? ... 4:28 P.M.

[publius1]

I live in New York, where we're used to the NY Times doing this over and over--i.e., oversampling minorities, urban-dwellers, and females. It is the major reason the Times can always find that the public does not support W, that things are going badly, that rebuilding Iraq is an opinion cesspool, etc., etc., all things that make the Times editorials smile before sleep.

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[goldstategop]

It was a "push poll" meant to help Gray Davis' would be successor. Its striking that nearly up to the last moment the Los Angeles Times showed Cruz The Snooze leading when in fact he really was far behind most of the time. When they finally came out with the real results just before the election, they started throwing slime at Arnold to bury their last poll findings. Coincidence? I think not - and the LAT couldn't even help the Democrat win or make sure Davis kept his job. Chief Editor John Carroll has NO defense re his newspaper's blatant partisanship that the public would buy.

[publius1]

You say it was a push-poll... Do you mean in the sense that it gave the rest of the media something to chatter about, as a way of trying to turn the voter tide for Davis and Bustamonte.

(The idea of a push poll done by the media to convince the rest of the media of something just occurred to me!)

[San Jacinto]

Bonus question: How badly do you have to embarrass the paper to get fired at the LAT?

Just write something that is Pro-Republican and you will find out. Right Quick.