If you needed any more evidence that the MSM is in desperate need of a close race, I present CNN's writeup of their most recent poll. Check out this spin:
New CNN Poll: Obama, McCain in a statistical dead heat
With the dust having finally settled after the prolonged Democratic presidential primary, a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll shows Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama locked in a statistical dead heat in the race for the White House.
With just over four months remaining until voters weigh in at the polls, the new survey out Tuesday indicates Obama holds a narrow 5-point advantage among registered voters nationwide over the Arizona senator, 50 percent to 45 percent. That represents little change from a similar poll one month ago, when the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee held a 46-43 percent edge over McCain.
No spin there! More after the break.
I'm continually amazed at the MSM ability to perpetuate pre-existing polling storylines. I mean, does this poll have an unusually high margin of error or something?
The poll, conducted June 26-29, surveyed 906 registered voters and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Not really. If this poll showed McCain ahead by a point, do you suppose we'd see a similar headline? Considering McCain hasn't been ahead in ANY poll since May (check out Pollster.com), we'd probably see some screaming headline "McCain erases Obama advantage!" or some such nonsense.
Also, compare this with the Gallup write-up today on a similar 5 point lead.
National voter preferences are holding steady, with 47% of registered voters favoring Barack Obama and 42% backing John McCain in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from June 28-30.
Now it's a given that the Gallup tracking poll has a larger sample, but the margin of error is still +-2 points. CNN actually seems to imply that the race has somehow changed, even though Obama was up 3 points in the last poll.
How about "Obama is ahead"? Save the statistical analysis for the writeup, not the headline. Otherwise we might thing you're trying to fit a poll into a pre-existing storyline. Nah, that would never happen.