THOSE STRANGE POLLS – AT 8:33 A.M. ET:   There is some interesting buzz this morning about those strange polls, which, in contrast to the Gallup and Rasmussen daily trackers, show Obama way ahead. 

On the Fox News segment “Campaign Insiders” today, Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen both confirmed their belief that major polls are skewed in favor of the Democrats by over-sampling of Democratic voters when the surveys are conducted.

It must be said that those two are kind of Democratic apostates.  They don't follow the party line, much to our benefit.

The Campaign Insiders segment is co-hosted on the Fox News Channel weekly on Sundays and Monday by Doug Schoen, Pat Caddell, and former New York Republican Congressman John LeBoutillier.

Last week's Pew poll shows a ten point lead for President Obama, 51 percent to 41 percent, and the last Democracy Corps poll showing a 50 to 46 Obama lead. LeBoutillier said of the two polls, “in both polls, suddenly the president is at the magic 50 percent of above, which he has not been at really all year in any poll."

And...

Caddell addressed the over-sampling of Democrats in the surveys, saying, “what you have is an act of utter irresponsibility, in my opinion, by the Pew Poll and the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.”

“They shouldn't be running these...(they) are having an effect on this election that is really bad,” Caddell said of the media outlets publishing these polls as news stories.

“The key issue in this business is integrity...here's the real issue, the explicit message in all of this is, you got to tell the truth, I don't believe that anyone doing a poll today, for whoever, could credibly release numbers that are plus 11 for the Democratic Party,” said Schoen.

Caddell said the reason for skewing the polls, “what is the effect, is it to build an artificial picture, an illusion, of great Obama momentum.”

That's quite a serious charge, but it's consistent with the charge, which we often make here, that the mainstream media, which commissions many of these polls, is hopelessly biased.  "Corrupt" would be a better word. 

There is obviously something wrong when daily trackers show the candidates within a point or two of each other, and a "respected" poll comes along and shows Obama ten points ahead.

Additionally, a Real Clear Politics article by Sean Trende shows how the latest CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac survey of swing states shows Obama leading and with 50 percent in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. These state surveys also over-sampled Democratic voters and in doing so skewed their results to show Obama running stronger than in other, likely more accurate surveys, conducted with more realistic sampling by voter registration.

The Washington Post/ABC news polls released last month showed the same trend of over-sampling of Democratic voters and results that favored President Obama over Mitt Romney. Critics of the polls say many of the major media sponsored and commissioned polls have been skewed in this way but the media outlets continue to report the results of these surveys.

COMMENT:  Welcome to our brave new world.  This is what happens when "journalists" are taught in college and journalism schools, not to be faithful reporters, but to be "change agents."  We are being hurt as a country by the ladies and gentlemen of the media, who are destroying the very argument for their own existence.  But they don't think so.

September 24, 2012