Red Shift?

Were were assured (as soon as election night in 2008) that Virginia had made a historic shift toward being blue – a new stronghold for Democrats. What is increasingly looking like a blowout for the Republican candidate for Virginia governor, Bob McDonnell, makes those pronouncements look a bit more like media cheerleading than actual fact:

A new poll from SurveyUSA finds Bob McDonnell (R) leading the Virginia gubernatorial race by 19 points with 59% of the vote — his highest tally in any general election poll (Oct. 17-19, 595 LV, MoE +/- 4%). The standout stat from the survey results is that 71% of independents support McDonnell.

McDonnell 59 (+5 vs. last poll, Oct. 5)

Deeds 40 (-3)

Und 1

This is an outlier – these are really high numbers compared to other polls. But even an eight point win would be a stunning – really stunning – number. And that is the lowest margin I have seen at this point.

No matter how they try to paint this, this is a stone disaster for Democrats. Regardless of how much media cheerleading you are inundated with by the Obamacentric press, the sane Democrats are hearing footsteps right now. They will be sacked if they stay their leftist course. Bank on it.

And that’s if the lowest number is correct. If the higher number is right, watch out. It just got even worse for the Dems.

A Thought Experiment On Polling

Ed Morrisey notes that the latest ABC/WaPo poll appears to have a badly skewed – toward Democrats – sample.

The sampling comprises 33% Democrats, as opposed to only 20% Republicans. That thirteen-point spread is two points larger than their September polling, at 32%/21%. More tellingly, it’s significantly larger than their Election Day sample, which included 35% Democrats to 26% Republicans for a gap of nine points, about a third smaller than the gap in this poll. Of course, that’s when they were more concerned about accuracy over political points of view.

Remember when I wrote that poll watchers need to remember the recent Gallup poll on party affiliation? Gallup polled 5,000 adults and found that the gap between Democrats and Republicans had closed to the smallest margin since 2005, six points, and had been reduced more than half since the beginning of the year. For the WaPo/ABC poll, though, their sample gap has increased almost 50% during that time.

What is missing from the crosstab data (at least I did not see it) is how many responses were discarded to obtain the sample they report.

I think that makes a potentially huge difference in the polling. Think about this. If they had to discard 10 opinions to reach their sample number of 1,004 that tells one story.

If they had to discard 1,000 it tells a completely different story, indeed.

So, what are the raw contact numbers, as opposed to the final results posted by WaPo? What criteria did they use to make the discards? That information is actually vital to deciding what the poll is actually telling you – as opposed to the media interpretation of the results. Think about how that would make you read a poll for a moment. Skewing a sample to match the demographics of a population is quite regular in the world of statistics.

How you get there is also part (an unreported part) of the story.

(This is why I take polls with a grain of salt the size of Detroit, incidentally.)

Doubling Down On A Loser Hand

The Obama administration has decided to go all in on a hand containing nothing higher than a six of diamonds. The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus is calling the won’s war on Fox News “dumb”.

There’s only one thing dumber than picking a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel — picking a fight with people who don’t even have to buy ink. The Obama administration’s war on Fox News is dumb on multiple levels. It makes the White House look weak, unable to take Harry Truman’s advice and just deal with the heat. It makes the White House look small, dragged down to the level of Glenn Beck. It makes the White House look childish and petty at best, and it has a distinct Nixonian — Agnewesque? — aroma at worst. It is a self-defeating trifecta: it distracts attention from the Obama administration’s substantive message; it serves to help Fox, not punish it, by driving up ratings; and it deprives the White House, to the extent it refuses to provide administration officials to appear on the cable network, of access to an audience that is, in fact, broader than hard-core Obama haters.

And Jake Tapper of ABC News, bless his heart, went after Head White House flack Robert Gibbs:

Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –

(Crosstalk)

Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.

Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –

Gibbs: ABC -

Brit Hume, who is I think, one of the best in the business at the moment (even though I don’t watch Fox these days, Hume was one I used to make sure I caught when I did) wondered how other networks liked being patted on the head by the White House for their reporting on the won:

“…One wonders how our colleagues at CNN and elsewhere like being patted on the head and given the seal of approval by the White House. These outlets already stand accused of being in the tank for Mr. Obama. Do they really want to open themselves up to more such criticism by ignoring legitimate stories because they originate here?”

This is on top of the New York Times warning the White House as well as Helen Thomas proclaiming this a really bad idea.

The backfire has begun in earnest. By singling out Fox as a target, the other news organizations are being exposed as little more than trained seals, regurgitating Obama worship at the drop of a hint by the White House. Fox, on the other hand, is being given a huge boost in ratings, assuring the White House of more and more people seeing the news Obama wants suppressed, sidelined and marginalized.

This is a really, really stupid move by the White House. The best and the brightest strike again. They are so smart that they cannot see the trap they set – for themselves. The rest of the media cannot ignore this, nor can they join in on attacking Fox on command of the White House. To do so will risk them being caught in the same backlash and losing even more readership/viewers to Fox.

Axelrod and Emanuel (and their boss) have a tiger by the tail. The problem is going to be how to let go and escape the claws.

Good luck with that one, guys. This is fun to watch.