CNN with even MORE misleading poll headlines
Sat Jul 05, 2008 at 12:17:06 PM PDT
Fresh off CNN's decision to promulgate the idea that Obama's 5-point lead over McCain (which has been consistent with other polls) constituted a "statistical dead heat", CNN has come out with yet another misleading poll headline--this time regarding the state of Clinton voters.
You can imagine my concern this morning when I directed my browser to CNN and saw the "latest news" about a poll that showed "warning signs" for Obama.
More below the fold.
Naturally, I'm curious. I want to see what the "warning signs" for Obama are. Maybe there's a new poll out showing that McCain is catching up. Maybe (since it's around the 4th of July and all) there was a poll showing that people doubt Obama's "patriotism" somehow.
So, I was really disappointed to find out that the poll was actually about the opinions of former Clinton supporters, and that the "warning sign" was that the number of Clinton supporters who say they're going to vote for Obama is down from 60% to 54% and Democrats who want Clinton to be the nominee is up from 35% to 43%.
In addition, the number of Clinton supporters that just say they'll sit the election out is increasing:
In early June, 22 percent of Clinton supporters polled said they would not vote at all if Obama were the party's nominee, now close to a third say they will stay home.
There's some significant movement in there, and a lot of it could be related to the FISA controversy, as well as this new-fangled "Obama is flip-flopping on Iraq" garbage that CNN actually helped propagate.
First things first: I'm not inclined to believe that disaffected Democrats will stay disaffected. Somewhere out there, I remember a poll being posted here that shows that the vast majority of McCain voters ended up voting for Bush in 2000 at a time when our partisan divide was somehow less than it is today,
But here's the deceptive part of the poll: The number of Clinton supporters who say they will vote for McCain has also gone down--but they don't tell you how much:
According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Friday, the number of Clinton supporters who plan to defect to Republican Sen. John McCain's camp is down from one month ago, but -- in what could be an ominous sign for Obama as he seeks to unify the party -- the number of them who say they plan to vote for Obama is also down, and a growing number say they may not vote at all.
Now, anyone who can do basic arithmetic realizes that there could be more than one thing going on here. First of all, like I mentioned earlier: the number of Clinton supporters who say they will vote for Obama has dropped in the poll by 6%: from 60% to 54%.
However: the number of people who say they will not vote has increased by something close to double that: "from 20% to slightly less than a third", according to the poll. For simplicity's sake, that probably means around 32%.
The only logical conclusion, then, is that there has been a similar shift in Clinton supporters who said in June that they were going to vote for McCain but now are saying they'll sit at home. After all, the rest of the increase in Clinton voters who say they'll stay home has to come from somewhere.
And, assuming that our 32% figure from above is accurate, that means that an equal number of Clinton voters for McCain and Clinton voters for Obama are now saying they'll sit it out. That means that as far as Obama's electoral chances are concerned, he actually has lost zero ground despite being hammered from the left for the better part of the past couple of weeks.
And, in an increasing sign of unity, even despite disaffection from Democrats on FISA, the number of Clinton supporters who say they'll support McCain is shrinking. And not only that: if we assume that there has been a 6% shift, as described earlier to "sit it out" from both McCain support and Obama support among Clinton voters (which is the only logical conclusion based on that poll), that also means that the percentage of McCain voters going neutral is substantially higher than the percentage of Obama voters who have gone neutral--which is, in fact, a positive sign for Obama.
Not, mind you, that you'll get that from a CNN article that intentionally seeks to minimize Obama's gains while maximizing his losses.
And not, mind you, that I saw anything close to this on CNN when a Rasmussen poll showed Obama up by 5 points in freakin' Montana. That wasn't a warning sign for McCain. But apparently, a poll that shows no shift in support towards McCain or away from Obama in terms of absolute value is a huge warning sign.
Corrupt.
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