Bush Leads by Three in Dem-Skewing CBSNYT Poll

This might be very good news indeed.

OTOH, Frank Luntz says that Bush needs to be up by at least three in order to win (due to new voters and late-undecideds voting against him, plus, you know, fraud), so if this poll is merely accurate, Bush is still only fifty-fifty to prevail.

The article is worth reading, because it does endeavor to spin this as really bad news for Bush.

It's not just news-- it's hilarious liberal desperation.

Update: But the New York Times goes, as usual, a little farther.

If any of you are fans of Mickey Kaus, you know that Times' reporter Adam Nagourney is their go-to guy for liberal cocooning. For example, when the last NYT poll in 2002 showed a massive movement towards Republicans, Nagourney buried that interesting finding until nearly the end of the article, and wrote some idiotic article about the polls' findings about voter anxiety and the like. He gave it the following headline:

Poll Finds Americans Like Cheese

Okay, not that, but something equally anodyne and boring. The New York Times "newspaper" deliberately refused to report its own discovery of actual news in order to not distress its archliberal constituency.

At any rate, the latest NYT poll finds that Bush is ahead by three-- cause for some alarm to liberals, given the poll's Democratic skew.

And what's the headline?

In Final Days, Divided Electorate Expresses Anxiety.

Once again, Nagourney deliberately avoids mention of the actual news-making part of the poll in favor of a non-newsworthy headline that won't discombobulate liberals too much.

The first two paragraphs:

The nation is girding for tomorrow's presidential election, worried about the integrity of the voting system, divided over the legitimacy of President Bush's election four years ago and anxious about the future no matter who wins the contest, according to the final New York Times/CBS News Poll of the 2004 campaign.

The poll shows that Mr. Bush and his opponent, Senator John Kerry, remain locked in a statistical tie as they head into the final 48 hours of the race. But the poll registered an increase in Mr. Bush's job approval rating, as well as an increase in the number of Americans who said the nation was heading in the right direction. Republicans described this as evidence that Mr. Bush was picking up speed in these closing days of the campaign, but Democrats dismissed the numbers, saying that both figures remain dangerously low for an incumbent.

Nagourney waits until the sixth paragraph to actually let you know Bush is up 49-46-- not really a "statistical tie" at all, because any statistician can tell you that any lead indicates at least the probability that one man is ahead, even if you can't be sure of the margin. This lead isn't big, but neither is it tiny.

Nagourney has waited far, far longer in his articles to inform his readers of what the poll actually says. He's slipping a bit. I expect better/worse from him.

Loose shit, Adam.

posted by Ace at 10:21 PM

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