There's Something Rotten in the State of New York
by Phil Creek ( Razorback3100)
It started out as curiosity... about two and a half weeks ago I, and many others, marveled at how Bernie Sanders had been able to whittle Hillary's lead in New York from a 43 point lead down to 7 and a half points. I was following the polling to see how much further he could whittle it down and looked forward to seeing Bernie pull ahead. But then something....odd.... happened. I went a week with no new polling data coming out, which, given the importance of the New York primary, I thought, well, ODD.
Then, on April 12th, a new NATIONAL poll came out showing Bernie 1 point ahead among registered democrats, 11 points ahead among Dem-leaning voters, and 16 points ahead among independents.
"WOW!!!" Was the thought that came to mind.
The same day, I started seeing new polling coming out of New York which, frankly, did not make sense. Polling showing Hillary ahead 53 to 37% ( Which is weird in itself as suddenly there was a much larger percentage of voters that hadn’t yet chosen a candidate when usually the closer you get to an election day, the opposite is more true ). The next poll I saw was from CNN and it was showing 54 - 32 Clinton, which made me scratch my head even more... So I had to start asking myself, "What's going on here? How did Hillary pull 16 to 22 points ahead in 9 days?" The polling tightened upwards for Bernie over the next couple of days but still had Hillary at anywhere from a 13 to a 17 point lead, but still the weirdness and oddity of the sudden reversal in polling data made me question what in the hell was going on.
So I decided, since I have a background in journalism and a severe case of insomnia, to look into it. What I found was, well, disturbing...
After just a couple hours of research and going over polling procedures I started to become troubled. It appeared some of the polling in the last week or so taken in New York was done so in order to give a false appearance of majority support for Hillary Clinton. CNN as well as an NBC affiliate, the Wall Street Journal, and Marist all apparently targeted area's in New York which heavily favored Sec. Clinton in previous races including her Senate runs and the 2008 primary. Instead of having a broad base to poll, these organizations had apparently, and purposely, only polled in counties and demographic populations they knew had favored Clinton in the past....
I realized that if this turned out to be true, it would prove blatant manipulation of the process and polling data in order to misinform and suppress turnout for Bernie Sanders.
What my queries and research revealed was that Marist, after the knowledge of the Reuters poll showing Bernie pulling ahead nationally by a single point, conducted a poll inside upper-income precincts of New York City, select counties in western New York, and upper New York state. Polling was mostly targeted in the Counties of St. Lawrence and Herkimer (where Hillary won the 2008 primary by 70% in each), Nassau and Suffolk counties (each 62%), Fulton County ( 77%), Orleans county ( 76%), Cattaraugus county ( 69%) and Yates county ( 70%).
In Tompkins county New York, the only county in New York then-candidate Obama won, not a single registered democrat was polled. This has also been the case in almost every county Hillary won in the 08 primary by less than 60%.
Also, apparently, the polling numbers shrank from asking 1600 to 2000 Registered Democrats to 500 to 600. On top of that, CNN (owned by Time-Warner, one of the top ten corporate contributors to the Hillary Clinton campaign), the Wall Street Journal, and Marist are only polling Registered Democrats from LAST year, not polling newly registered democrats that have been brought in to the democratic party by Bernie Sanders.
After doing some investigative journalism, making a few phone calls, and researching polling data for the last couple of nights (as I said, I have insomnia anyway ) the conclusion is that the polling data is being manipulated and presented in a direct bias in the favor of Sec. Clinton. It appears to have been done for two reasons; one, to depress and demoralize voter turn-out for Bernie Sanders in the crucial New York primary (a loss for Hillary there would put her electability in the general election in November into serious question), and two, to use the polling data average to suppress the Reuters polling of April 12th which gave Bernie Sanders a 1 point national lead over Hillary Clinton... And that part has worked. In the April 15th poll, the positions had slightly changed thanks to the manipulated New York polling data. Hillary had a point-7% lead over Bernie Sanders nation wide.
Whether this rather underhanded and unethical tactic to manipulate polling data will achieve its goal of suppressing turnout for Bernie Sanders in the New York primary has yet to be seen…
Interesting note to add.... According to what I consider a reliable and trustworthy source ( someone I've known for 25 years and works in the New York broadcast media ) out of 62 counties in New York, polling was mostly conducted in certain upper-income residential areas plus 12 counties, and only counties where Hillary had won the 2008 primary by at least 60% of the vote. The average that Hillary won those recently polled counties in 2008 was 65.7%...
