Thom Tillis (R)
We all know that you should never cherry-pick a single piece of polling data to make an argument, and here's an object lesson as to why.
In a new piece, the
New York Times' Nate Cohn claims that
a new CNN/ORC survey showing North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis with a 47-40 favorability rating ought to undermine the narrative that Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan remains persistently ahead thanks to Tillis' own flaws. "[I]n the absence of more evidence to the contrary," says Cohn, we "should at least be open to the possibility that Mr. Tillis is more popular than was thought."
Here's the problem: There's a ton of evidence to the contrary. In fact, pollsters have asked voters for their views on Tillis over 20 times in 2014 alone. Here's what his net favorability rating looks like in all of those polls:
In September alone, five other pollsters found Tillis underwater. In fact, all year, only one outfit
other than CNN—the ever-dodgy Rasmussen—has ever shown Tillis with higher positives than negatives. But even Rasmussen has now joined the herd, as you can see in that light purple trendline.
Is it possible that Tillis has gotten somewhat more popular of late? He may well have, particularly if you look at the yellow line, which shows how PPP's numbers have shifted. (A disastrous legislative session Tillis presided over as speaker of the state House finally concluded last month, stemming the tide of ugly headlines.)
But is he actually popular? No. As Cohn himself said, "If there were more surveys showing Mr. Tillis as unpopular as the conventional view, then perhaps we could discount the CNN/ORC poll as an outlier." Indeed there are many such surveys, and the chart above makes CNN's distance from the pack glaringly obvious. In fact, one of the polls showing Tillis with negative favorables was his own internal poll! So evidently, even Thom Tillis doesn't agree with Nate Cohn.
Cohn began his piece with an intelligent observation. He said it's "not usually wise to focus too much on individual polls." That's something we would all do well to remember as election season heats up.