Weigel

Opening Act: The Poll Sample Truthers

A New York state senator wins his primary after a long count. Why does that matter to anyone outside New York? Zack Ford explains.

The National Organization for Marriage has been boasting that it successfully impacted the Republican primaries in New York, challenging several state senators who had voted for marriage equality. It turns out, it was only victorious in one of the many races

After New York legalized gay marriage, an action that required the votes of some Republican state senators, NOM wrote a detailed memo explaining how the law could be unwound over several years. Step one: Eject all of the faithless senators. They ejected one out of four.

The NFL’s referee disaster (I’ll outsource a fuller explanation of this to Josh Levin) has Scott Walker backing unions.

But really, what I’m interested in is the rising trend of conservatives denying that the media’s campaign polling is accurate, because it fails to sample to huge number of Republicans sure to turn out. I’ve written before about the small-beer spin-off of the Tea Party Express: The Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama. In its latest email, the CDBO points donors to UnSkewed Polls.

Here’s the chart of how the media polls would be if the media’s bias towards Obama was neutralized, and a proper weight of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, etc… would be reflected. Every single poll when the bias is removed shows that the Romney/Ryan ticket actually holds a lead over the Obama/Biden ticket.

And on Fox News, Dick Morris sweatily misinforms a conservative audience that everything’s going just great and the media’s lying to them and Mitt Romney would win by “4 or 5 points” if the election were held tomorrow.