Polls

Do you trust them? Do you believe them? Lets look at some polls of the first Presidential debate this season:

CNN Poll

Ok, CNN gives Obama the lead. Not surprising.

Fox News Poll

Fox News gives McCain the lead, but not as much. Are they more fair? Before you answer, they did have a texting/email poll and the results were 84% to McCain, 14% to Obama, and 1% undecided. A big discrepency between the two. Odd, no?

Drudge Report Poll

Drudge gives McCain the lead as well.

Who won? Two out of three say McCain.

Ok, I know, these aren’t scientific polls. But what about them? Lets look at this one:

Washington Post-ABC News Poll

NET LEANED VOTE – LIKELY VOTERS

Other    Neither   Would not       No
Obama   McCain   (vol.)    (vol.)   vote (vol.)   opinion
9/22/08     52        43            *         1          0            3

NET LEANED VOTE – REGISTERED VOTERS
Other    Neither   Would not       No
Obama   McCain   (vol.)    (vol.)   vote (vol.)   opinion
9/22/08     52        42            1         1          *            4
As you can see, Obama is above by 9 or 10 percent.

Accurate? Fair? Let’s look at the sampling data:

The survey includes additional interviews with randomly selected African Americans, for a total of 163 black respondents.

This is called oversampling. Since about 90% of blacks support Obama, this will give him an edge. Fair? Doesn’t look like it!

Now let’s look at the data on the people being polled:

901. Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as:

            Democrat     Republican     Independent     Other     No op.
9/22/08 RV     38            28              29           5         1

904. (IF NOT DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN) Do you lean more towards the:

         Democratic Party    Republican Party    (VOL) Neither    No op.
9/22/08 RV     46                   28                 24           2

Hmm, a 9/10% lead for votes and the party affiliation is 10/18% higher for Democrats. In my opinion there are also a lot of Independents too. From what I’ve read, they tend to vote Democrat too.

Is anyone surprised that Obama got a higher rating now? Before you believe the polls, it may be wise to read the fine print! It’d also be nice if they’d make sure the political makeup matches the population.

EDIT:

Round 1 in debates goes to Obama, poll says

A national poll of people who watched the first presidential debate suggests that Barack Obama came out on top, but there was overwhelming agreement that both Obama and John McCain would be able to handle the job of president if elected.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey is not a measurement of the views of all Americans, since only people who watched the debate were questioned and the audience included more Democrats than Republicans.

Emphasis mine. They used more Dems than Reps! Shocking!! No bias in the media here!

Fifty-one percent of those polled thought Obama did the better job in Friday night’s debate, while 38 percent said John McCain did better.

“It can be reasonably concluded, especially after accounting for the slight Democratic bias in the survey, that we witnessed a tie in Mississippi tonight,” CNN Senior Political Researcher Alan Silverleib said. “But given the direction of the campaign over the last couple of weeks, a tie translates to a win for Obama.”

Even after they consider the effects of the bias and state it as a ‘tie’, they still find some way to show that a ‘tie’ is a win for Obama. No bias here!

The results may be favoring Obama simply because more Democrats than Republicans tuned in to the debate. Of the debate-watchers questioned in this poll, 41 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans and 30 percent as independents.

Can you believe that? There are more Independents than Republicans in the polling! And 14% more Democrats than Republicans! And they call this a ‘slight Democratic bias’!!! And people actually have the nerve to call Fox News ‘Faux News’! At this point it looks like CNN deserves that title instead!!!