Posted on 06/11/2004 4:48:47 PM PDT by Pikamax
The LAT Does It Again: Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster, blasted the latest LAT poll (showing Kerry up 7) as a "mess." Specifically, he noted in an email sent to NBC and ABC that
Bush is leading independents by three, ahead among Republicans by a larger margin than Kerry is ahead among Dems, and we are down by seven. Outrageous. And it gets worse. They have Dems leading generic congressional ballot by 19. this means this poll is too Democratic by 10 to 12 points.
Who's right? Ask Governor Gray Davis! O.K, thats a cheap shot. But LAT-watchers have been skeptical of the Times Poll ever since it alone showed Davis closing to a virtual dead heat in the recent California gubernatorial recall--a report that virtually everyone else (including rival campaigns and the rival Field Poll) scoffed at. I've been told, however, that Times polling director Susan Pinkus is a straight shooter, so I did the irresponsible thing and postponed sniping while I called her up. [Don't let this happen again--ed] Here's what I learned:
--The party breakdown in the LAT poll was 38 % Democratic, 25% Republican, 24% Independent. That's about the same as the 38/19/26 breakdown of a year ago, but it's a big increase in Democrats since March of this year, when they were only 33 percent of the sample. Pinkus argues her latest numbers are not that different from a recent ABC poll that she said showed Democrats with a 37/27 percent edge. And she says her overall horse-race result isn't much different from the latest Gallup poll, which had Kerry up 6 in a three-way race. (That was among "likely" voters. The Times surveyed "registered" voters--and Gallup only had Kerry up by 3 in that broader group.)
--On the gigantic Democratic generic Congressional-preference lead in her survey, Pinkus said, "I don't know what's happening with that. If that's true, it's huge. ... I've seen it 5 or 6 points, but never 19, it's true." She said she stood by her poll, however. (Earlier she had noted that one out of 20 polls will be wrong, given the accepted margins of error.)
--Other commentators (such as RCP's T. Bevan) have hung their critique on Bush's much better showing in the Times' separate, more intense look at three battleground states. Can Bush really be losing nationally by 6 points and still be winning Missouri by 11 points? Seems unlikely.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.msn.com ...
Thanks for posting this.
I've been checking the sampling mix used by various polls whenever possible. The bias in the LAT poll is ridiculous.
What, the LA Times is biased? GASP! Tell me it isn't so!!
The L.A. Times may be doing Bush a favor. A number of Monday-morning quarterbacks after the Bush/Gore contest suggested that Bush wasted too much time and money trying to win or be competitive in California with nothing to show for it.
gw is going to win ny, fl, tx, and ca. kerry is going to win mass and that's about it...
That's right. But the 38%, 25%, 24% breakdown is way off the mark. It's a lot closer to a three way split nationally. This seems to be geared for the LA metro area.
I'd say the LASlimes is "California dreaming".
Those dirty bastards! Brit Hume mentioned the 13% more democrats on his show this afternoon. This needs to be reported and written about nationally. What a crock.
This isn't bias. It's plain dishonest. It makes one wonder if the press deserves its freedom. I don't think the Founders had a deceptive, unethical, self-serving press in mind.
Why bother to fight this fight? The only poll that matters is the one that happens in November. If you remember, the liberal media couldn't get that one right even with exit polls.
Propaganda Poll PING!!!
LA Slimes, Campaigning for Kerry 24/7.
Right, but these numbers are based on what the LA Times staff call themselves. More and more, Liberals are calling themselves 'independent', 'moderate', 'centrist', and stuff like that. Looking at these numbers in the real world, the LA Times is 38% Democratic + 24% Independent = 62% liberal. And that's the skewed number of this poll. Let's not forget, 90% of the press vote hard Democrat.
It seems that as we get closer to the election, two things are happening: One, the major newspapers except for the WSJ, all three broadcast news outlets, and all cable news stations except for Fox, have become almost comically biased against Bush; and, second, that we hear a lot more than we used to about how there's no liberal bias. Is it just me?
Actually what the founders had in mind was a MORE partisan press. However, they also thought the press would be seen in that light. The problem here is that there is an expectation of impartiality that does not exist.
MSN.COM ran a headline on their front page today: "Rising Doubts about Iraq." It was entirely based on the Slimes poll. Sickening.
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