It’s not even Thanksgiving before 2024
Bill Scher on formerly Twitter calls the Washington Post-ABC News poll “obviously ridiculous.“
How ridiculous? This ridiculous:
Among voters under age 35, Trump leads Biden in the new Post-ABC poll by 20 points. Some other recent public polls show Biden winning this group by between six and 18 points. In 2020, Biden won voters under age 35 by double digits. Among non-White voters, the poll findsBiden leads by nine points. In four other public polls, Biden’s lead among non-White voters ranges from 12 points to 24 points.
Higher up in the story (emphasis mine):
The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.
Jeff Jarvis of CUNY’s Newmark Graduate School of Journalism has some Mastodon words for the Washington Post and its front-page headline about Joe Biden. “The Washington Post cannot see that this is not a poll about Biden but instead a poll about journalism and its failures to inform the public. Polls are their self-fulfilling prophesies. They are damaging to public discourse.”
Ya think? But, hell, the paper paid for the poll and, shitty or not, we’re just gonna slap it across the front page anyway. Watch for it to pop up in discussion on the Sunday talkies this morning.
In another poll from New Hampshire this week, the Post headlined: Fox News viewers love Trump. Newsmax viewers idolize him. Earth-shaking, right?
Pollsters have a business model and a product to sell. The horse-race media obliges the public’s hunger for who’s in and who’s out, who’s ahead and who’s behind, the way television furnishes reality shows when the writers are on strike. Even contentless content is preferable if it generates clicks. We already covered the only polls that matter.
As if Washington isn’t ridiculous enough, silly season is already here.
Clay Higgins says Fetterman’s clothes are communist. pic.twitter.com/wDqb7ykcWz
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 24, 2023
.@mikerogersforMi comes out in favor of launching insurrections and stealing the nation’s most sensitive secrets.
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) September 24, 2023
Given that he was HPSCI chair, this should raise questions about whether he, too, stole secrets from the government. https://t.co/GZn9bPDXTi