You may have seen the headlines saying Hillary Still Leading Over Bernie, or words to that effect. Those articles generally refer to the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primaries—you know, Hillary’s “firewall”.
Various mainstream press outlets have been running iterations of that headline for weeks, right through the Iowa caucuses, and they are still running them now. Even FiveThirtyEight talks up Clinton’s lead in South Carolina. They keep talking about it as if nothing has changed.
...and in a way, nothing has changed. Specifically, they haven’t had any new state polls to report on in weeks. There hasn’t been a new South Carolina poll since over a week before the Iowa caucuses, and there hasn’t been a new Nevada poll since December. Saying that she’s still definitively leading without any new data seems disingenuous at best.
So why is the media, even The New York Times, reporting on Hillary’s polling lead using old polls as new or current data?