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Presidential Polls 2012: Skewed Polling and Biased Media Coverage Give Obama False Advantage
Townhall ^ | 09/26/2012 | John Giokaris

Posted on 09/26/2012 9:46:24 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

From its double standard on how the mainstream media has covered both campaigns, to the 2008-Democrat heavy polling models they use, to the lack of investigative reporting on the scandals associated with this administration, it has become blatantly evident that the mainstream media harbors a liberal bias, commits endless hypocrisies and will not hold this president up to the same standards it has for previous presidents.

Campaign Coverage

I find the messaging from both campaigns to be remarkably stunning. Despite both candidates being Harvard graduates and worth millions of dollars each, one is labeled as “out of touch” with mainstream America by the elitist New York news media, Hollywood celebrities and Washington insiders (as if they have any idea what’s “in touch” with mainstream America) while the other is not as he hosts $40,000-a-plate fundraisers and hob nobs on talk shows with these same millionaire celebrities and media personalities.

Furthermore, while the Romney campaign has kept its messaging solely focused on Obama’s record as president, his policies and his results, the Obama campaign has launched into personal character attacks against Romney, accusing him of waging a war on women, of being a felon by not paying his taxes, and even murdering a steel worker’s wife.

For its part, the mainstream media has done a thorough job covering Romney’s past, including tracing his family’s history all the way back to their Mexican roots, his father having once been on public aid, and the personal lifestyles of Mitt, his wife Anne, and their five sons.

But where was the mainstream media on Obama’s family history and professional career? Did you know that his grandparents deliberately moved to Mercer Island, Washington so that they could enroll his mother into the only openly Marxist school in America? Did you know that communist radical Frank Marshall Davis was chosen by his grandfather to be his political mentor? Did you know that he hasn’t released any of his personal records from his college transcripts to the list of legal clients he represented when he was practicing law?

These aren’t rumors, these are facts. Did it really take an independent documentary by an academic scholar to reveal this to the general public?

If the media is going to question Romney’s past, political views and “lack of transparency” in the national spotlight, I feel it is only fair that they do the same for Obama. But nothing short of a miracle would ever make that happen.

Polling

The liberal mainstream media and blogosphere are desperately trying to write Romney’s funeral using polls that oversample Democrats by as much a D+10, D+11 and D+13. In 2008, an historic election wave for Democrats, the electorate was D+7. In 2004, when George W. Bush won re-election, the electorate was evenly split. In other words, D+0. So was the 2010 midterm election: evenly split. The Democrat share of the electorate is not going to double this year. Given the well-noted enthusiasm edge for Republicans this year, the electorate is going to be far closer to the 2004 and 2010 models than 2008. Any poll trying to replicate the 2008 is going to artificially inflate Obama’s support.

But as pollster John McLaughlin explains, “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models. They are lobbying them now to affect early voting. IVR (Interactive Voice Response) polls are heavily weighted. You can weight to whatever result you want. Some polls have included sizable segments of voters who say they are ‘not enthusiastic’ to vote or non voters to dilute Republicans. Major pollsters have samples with Republican affiliation in the 20 to 30% range, at such low levels not seen since the 1960s in states like Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and which then place Obama ahead. The intended effect is to suppress Republican turnout through media polling bias. We’ll see a lot more of this.”

A certain pundit on this site (guess who?) provided a link to some web site claiming that a national average of 2012 election polls (without citing which ones specifically) shows Obama leading Romney in several key states when excluding Rasmussen polls, implying Rasmussen has a Republican bias. What they fail to mention is that a Fordham University study concluded that Rasmussen had been the most accurate pollster throughout the 2008 election (and that was Obama’s good year).

I could just as easily provide a link to another website that claims to unskew the polls’ oversampling of Democrats to show that Romney actually leads Obama (and they even list which specific ones). But whether you look at Rasmussen, which has been accused of leaning right, Gallup, which has been accused of leaning left, both are showing the same thing: this race is virtually tied.

Absence of Investigative Journalism

Perhaps the biggest evidence of all proving the mainstream media’s liberal bias is the fact that it has thus far failed to push any further into this administration’s scandals such as Fast and Furious or the Benghazi attack.

Back in college, I remember reading Bob Woodward’s and Carl Bernstein’s All the President’s Men in journalism class, chronicling The Washington Post’s journalistic efforts to uncover the Nixon administration’s scandal regarding the Watergate break-in. It was a scandal in which President Nixon and his cabinet were exercising “executive privilege” to prevent the release of internal documents as well as trying to pin the blame on lower level subordinates to feebly deflect criticism and responsibility of the break-in.

Déjà vu 2012, where President Obama stopped the federal investigation into Operation Fast and Furious dead in its tracks by exercising “executive privilege” to prevent Attorney General Eric Holder from having to hand over internal Justice Department documents on the federal firearms sting operation that allowed weapons to reach Mexican drug cartels. Fourteen lower level subordinates at the Justice Department and ATF then get pinned for the blame and that’s where the administration is hoping it ends. Will there be any further reporting from the mainstream media on this? Or is Obama’s rendition of Al Green more important?

Or what about the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya? Within a week’s time, we witnessed this administration claim that it was a spontaneous protest against an anti-Islamic American film that got out of hand and caught them off guard to a reluctant admission that this was a pre-planned, coordinated attack with possible assistance from al-Qaeda of which they were warned about.

Watergate was a campaign stunt. These are scandals where U.S. border patrol agent Brian Terry, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and others have died. But where are today’s Woodwards and Bernsteins?

Is it then any wonder that a new Gallup poll shows American distrust in the mainstream media is now at an all-time high?

You’ll probably be even less shocked then to find that a majority of Democrats (58%) trust the mainstream media “to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly,” while only 31% of independents and 26% of Republicans trust the mainstream media to do the same.

Romney clearly has his work cut out for him. Too bad he doesn’t send a thrill up their leg the way Obama does.

Editor's Note:This piece originally appeared at PolicyMic.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: obama; partisanmediashills; polls; romney
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1 posted on 09/26/2012 9:46:30 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/09/flashback-gallup-had-carter-up-4-points-over-ronald-reagan-in-september-1980


2 posted on 09/26/2012 9:48:05 AM PDT by entropy12
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To: SeekAndFind

The all out crap from the media$$holes are to inoculate their BLACK TURD from the debates.....FOLKS THE FIX IS IN!! EVEN without one debate taking place the mediaRATS will declare Ovomit the victor!!! The headlines are already in the OVEN! Gosh it’s plain as day. THE economy is being forced off the table now because according to the mediaPIGS it miraculously improved in a span of one week, and according to them OBOZO ended the war...MY GOD, I hope Romney is prepared for the shameless spew that will radiate from the debates...which OJOKER already knows the questions....if they can lie boldface to us nightly without an iota of shame, do you think for one freakin moment they haven’t tossed the questions to their EVIL MASTER way already??!! AND as far as polls, I have a stinking feeling they are trying to draw out Romney’s team to reveal WHAT their polls indicate the direction the country is going to vote. I bet you anything their polls are a freakin mess and can’t make heads of tails of them. GET MAD and GET EVEN!!!


3 posted on 09/26/2012 9:48:32 AM PDT by RoseofTexas
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To: SeekAndFind

In other words, the mainstream media - also known as Obama’s Ministry of Propaganda - is full of sh*t.

But, then, we Freepers have known that for a long, long time.


4 posted on 09/26/2012 9:49:30 AM PDT by Jack Hammer
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To: SeekAndFind

UNSKEWEDPOLLS.COM...........


5 posted on 09/26/2012 9:51:00 AM PDT by Red Badger (Anyone who thinks wisdom comes with age is either too young or too stupid to know the difference....)
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To: Jack Hammer

http://unskewedpolls.com/


6 posted on 09/26/2012 9:53:02 AM PDT by Red Badger (Anyone who thinks wisdom comes with age is either too young or too stupid to know the difference....)
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To: Red Badger

RE: UNSKEWEDPOLLS.COM...........

Yes, but how valid is their assumption that Republican registration is 4.3 points higher than Democrats today?

If the assumption is wrong, then they are no better than the assumptions of the MSM polls which skew the other direction.


7 posted on 09/26/2012 9:54:18 AM PDT by SeekAndFind (bOTRT)
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To: Red Badger

EXCELLENT site - thank you!


8 posted on 09/26/2012 10:03:02 AM PDT by Jack Hammer
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To: SeekAndFind
Read Post #5.

This is not my research, that is Rasmussen's Party ID poll.

9 posted on 09/26/2012 10:04:27 AM PDT by Izzy Dunne (Hello, I'm a TAGLINE virus. Please help me spread by copying me into YOUR tag line.)
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To: SeekAndFind

The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting.

NO SALE Obama will fail.


10 posted on 09/26/2012 10:04:55 AM PDT by Vaduz
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To: SeekAndFind
Yes, but how valid is their assumption that Republican registration is 4.3 points higher than Democrats today?

I don't think it is an assumption, that based on actual registrations. I believe that for the first time, more people are registering Republican than Democrat. Seems like this should be reported all over the mainstream media, but it would make Obama look bad...
11 posted on 09/26/2012 10:08:03 AM PDT by yorkiemom (Yorkie Moms 4 Ryan ; Ryan + Romney = Recovery)
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To: SeekAndFind

electronic ballot counting machines that are programmed to steal the election and declare obozo the victor is the reason for these false pole numbers in order to validate that outcome. Rush thinks the skewed poles are meant for the obozo to warrant a challenge of a Romney victory and to spark riots. If mechanisms were in place to prevent vote fraud none of this would be happening.


12 posted on 09/26/2012 10:18:43 AM PDT by drypowder
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To: drypowder

I wonder how many people would think that they voted when they get a phone call asking who would they vote for?


13 posted on 09/26/2012 10:25:37 AM PDT by Baseballguy (If we knew what we know now in Oct would we do anything different?)
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To: Vaduz

And I predict this media scheme will backfire on them because the democrats will be convinced Obama is going to rout Romney and won’t bother going to the polls to vote for him!

Those of us that are terrified of what four more years of Obama will do to our country are determined to go vote no matter what.


14 posted on 09/26/2012 10:29:27 AM PDT by demkicker (My passion for freedom is stronger than that of Democrats whose obsession is to enslave me.)
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To: drypowder

I realize 2010 was an off-cycle election year, but I wonder why these polling firms aren’t using party affiliation from 2010. I would think that the results from that election would be more indicative of what will happen in 2012.


15 posted on 09/26/2012 10:29:56 AM PDT by VA_Gentleman ("Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very internet you invented." -Jon Stewart)
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To: drypowder

I sure hope you are wrong about the voting machines, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. These people are thugs and will do anything to keep their power.


16 posted on 09/26/2012 10:31:48 AM PDT by demkicker (My passion for freedom is stronger than that of Democrats whose obsession is to enslave me.)
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To: VA_Gentleman

They aren’t using 2010 data because it doesn’t fit their agenda and they certainly don’t want to give the Tea Party any credit for making such a huge difference.


17 posted on 09/26/2012 10:33:31 AM PDT by demkicker (My passion for freedom is stronger than that of Democrats whose obsession is to enslave me.)
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To: Jack Hammer

I doubt the holocaust would have happened if it had not been enabled by a “news” media.


18 posted on 09/26/2012 10:41:29 AM PDT by MikeSteelBe (Austrian Hitler was, as the Halfrican Hitler does.)
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To: yorkiemom; Red Badger
Yes, but how valid is their assumption that Republican registration is 4.3 points higher than Democrats today?

It's not based on registrations. It's based on Rasmussen's party identification poll, which is conducted every month.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/archive/mood_of_america_archive/partisan_trends/summary_of_party_affiliation

However, even Rasmussen says that it's not valid to use this poll to adjust others that are sampled separately, or with different methodologies.

I think that most of the polls are skewed. It's not necessarily intentional, but promoting them as accurate without pointing out the obvious oversampling of Democrats is intentional. A reputable pollster would never do it.

But, it's hard to get an unskewed poll these days. Many Republicans are disgusted with the media, and refuse to participate in the polls. Others are simply too busy -- they aren't at home to answer the phone. The only people that participate in polls these days are the ones with nothing else to do.

And even then, you have no way to know if the respondent is being honest. I think you can imagine a number of situations where you would be subject to retribution if you said you wouldn't vote for a particular candidate. Put yourself in that situation: if you got a phone call from someone claiming to be a pollster, how would you respond?

19 posted on 09/26/2012 10:48:34 AM PDT by justlurking (The only remedy for a bad guy with a gun is a good WOMAN (Sgt. Kimberly Munley) with a gun)
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To: SeekAndFind

I cant stand the media, even that guy Gasparino on Fox Business Network says that Wall Street is expecting an easy win for Obama..how the hell do they know!
Also, the polls today from Quinnipiac that shows Obama up 10 in Ohio, Im sorry but ANYONE that buys that is a dumb ass..if Obama is up 10 in Ohio there is NO reason for him to campaign there. He is up the same amount here in California, does anyone see Obama campaigning here? No I didnt think so, so if Obama is leading by that amount in Ohio he wouldn’t be wasting his time there, they are probably polling D+13 and when people dont answer the phone they put them down as Obama voters


20 posted on 09/26/2012 10:49:51 AM PDT by Sarah Barracuda
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