How badly does the New York Times want this election to go down to the wire? Like kids across the country want full-sized candy bars at every door they knock on Halloween. Take this article: Early turnout tilts toward Democrats in swing states. From the headline, you’d think this was going to be good news. And it is—if you can sift through the (estimated) four million mentions of, for instance, “the fallout from her campaign’s latest scrap with the F.B.I.”
The article basically alternates between vague suggestions of big turmoil in the race and more concrete suggestions that it’s much ado about very little. “Democrats continued to reel” … except “turnout tallies and interviews with dozens of early voters suggest that even a vintage ‘October surprise’ may pack less of a punch than it once did.” The key facts in the article:
In the states that are most likely to decide the election — among them Florida, Colorado and Nevada — close to a quarter of the electorate has already cast ballots. While their votes will not be counted until Election Day, registered Democrats are outperforming Republicans in key demographics and urban areas there and in North Carolina …
And:
In interviews with more than three dozen voters in three early-voting states — Colorado, Florida and North Carolina — most had at least a passing familiarity with the email developments but said the news had no bearing on their decisions at the ballot box.
But the rhetoric all points in the other direction: “the salient question appears to be whether an unforeseen plot twist in the campaign’s final days can still upend an election.” “The latest eruption in the email affair still threatens to turn many voters against Mrs. Clinton.” And—this is the best—“there were signs of weakness over the weekend, especially among African-Americans in North Carolina, where the turnout as of Saturday night showed that they had not voted at their 2012 levels so far,” a point made a solid seven paragraphs before the article gets around to mentioning that “because the state significantly curtailed early voting, Democrats have lagged behind their 2012 participation rate, while Republicans are running ahead. As more polling places open, Democrats are catching up to their 2012 rates.”
Doesn’t it seem like those two pieces of information belong adjacent to each other, if you’re trying to give a clear explanation of the early voting landscape? It’s almost like the Times is more interested in drama than information.
(That was sarcastic understatement. It’s exactly like that. And do not let yourself forget it over the next eight days.)
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