Fox’s Wallace Snaps at Radio Host: Romney ‘In Trouble,‘

Fox’s Chris Wallace apparently is sick of hearing critiques of polls showing Mitt Romney trailing President Obama, and isn’t afraid to let a wide audience know it. In a clip captured by Media Matters, Wallace tells radio host Mike Gallagher that criticizing the polls is an example of what he terms “craziness,“ and that ”no self-respecting pollster” weights their polls to make party ID even.

Those comments followed others that said Romney is “in trouble” and must win the upcoming presidential debate. In fact, he even had some harsh words for Gallagher when the host called out Wallace for thinking there’s trouble for Romney and believing the polls.

“I actually did some research on this today, which is more than you’ve done,” Wallace said sharply:

Wallace’s harsh delivery, coupled with his dismissal of an argument that a number of conservative pundits find persuasive, obviously won’t sit well with a number of conservatives trying to maintain optimism in the face of poll margins that increasingly look bad for Romney. However, his attack cuts both ways, as he lays into the mainstream media, saying he’s “never seen such bias” in the mainstream media. However, he apparently doesn’t believe the polls are biased in the same way.

He has some evidence for this, in that typically conservative media outlets have shown problematic margins for Romney in recent weeks. Fox News’ own poll shows Romney trailing Obama by five points nationally, with an NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll showing the same margin. Indeed, even Rasmussen shows Obama ahead by one point.

Update: Some regular listener’s of the Mike Gallagher program have pointed out that Wallace is a frequent guest on the program and that Wallace and Gallagher often trade good-natured barbs.

FOX NEWS network is my channel by choice, as can’t stand the rest of them...BUT on Sunday mornings I go to church and when the afternoon repeat comes on I’m tuned into FOOTBALL...

but when Wallace comes on, off goes FOX..better to hurt their rating than to listen to him...he is just too ‘tight’ and high and mighty thinking for my taste!!!!

so TURN OFF WALLACE...DON’T SUPPORT HIM WITH RATINGS...

LOL YOUR PRETTY NEW HERE...

funny you giving out advice to ‘old timers’ here at FR...

but then maybe your an ‘election visitor’ my opinion

New to FR....been a conservative before Reagan Revolution

I can tell, by your weak comment, “you are new here”, that you have pretty much maxed out your ability to decipher what is really “conservative” or not

You made a lot of good points. I agree with them — especially the parts about the technology changing. Also, I suspect that your use of call display to filter out pollsters is more typical of conservatives than liberals (touchy-feely-talky types).

I didn’t want to post too much, so I focused on phone surveys as a short cut. Some of the new technology can be quite useful — e.g. surveys by Internet, where the sample was pre-selected, and there is follow-up to get an acceptable response rate. Other new technologies vary from less valid to less than useless. Self-selected open Internet polls (the kind we’re often asked to Freep) are useless (except to, e.g., artificially create a bandwagon effect). Robo-calling phone surveys are generally useless; but, could be useful if properly conducted.

Not so long ago, in-person interviews, and mail-out surveys were the established methods; and telephone surveys were the upstart technology. It took quite a while for telephone surveys to be accepted — and they have never been considered as valid as in-person interviews. Even in-person interviews can have plenty of validity problems. For instance, the appearance and demeanour of the interviewer can skew results. Cost was the main factor in favour of telephone surveys — and it is the main driver of the move toward Internet and robo-calling surveys.

If the pollsters are interested in quality, there are ways to address most of the problems. For instance, one of the most effective ways to improve the quality of surveys is the use of pre-selected panels. Survey companies recruit large panels of willing participants; and then survey samples from the panel. That greatly improves the response rate, and helps ensure that, e.g. cell phone users are included in the sample.

The problem is, the political pollsters seem to be more interested in serving whatever agenda their clients have, than in any professional concern about validity and reliability. We’ve only touched on the ways that unscrupulous pollsters can skew results, to suit their clients’ wishes.

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