FoxNews Just Lied to Me About Their Latest Poll

After hyping their new poll for hours, telling me I wouldn't believe how the Ayers issue is resonating, I learned the following:

Obama ahead by 7.

Obama ahead with independents 34-32.

A mere 32% of voters say that the Ayers connection makes them less likely to vote for Obama (and of course almost all of these are Republicans who aren't voting for him anyway), and 29% of independents say the same (and they are likely McCain-leaners).

Doesn't change the Don't Panic post -- I didn't think the issue had broken through yet anyway -- but I'm extremely annoyed that Fox hyped this poll for two hours and then spun it as positive for McCain when it fact it's quite negative.

Most of the media believes conservatives are stupid. I would appreciate it if FoxNews, the conservative-leaning network, didn't also make its belief that conservatives are stupid so transparent.

Why McCain May Be Right About His Tactics: McCain's erosion comes primarily due to women defecting from his camp to Obama's. When he was ahead, he was only behind by 4 with women. Now he's down by 16.

Partly this is because Sarah Palin is simply not as big a draw with swing women as she was during Palinmania -- indeed, more voters are now less likely to vote for McCain due to her presence on the ticket. (It had been 40/30 more likely/less likely, now it's reversed, 30/40.)

The point is... most readers here are either guys or women who tend to be, well, kinda exceptional women, in that they're, uh, you know. Logical.

The tactics that seem so obvious to us might in fact be wrong-- who knows, perhaps McCain knows, based on polls and focus groups, that among the group he needs to win back -- white independent women -- the Fannie/Freddie stuff doesn't play. Maybe they don't get it; maybe they don't believe it; maybe the whole subject makes them feel uncomfortable because it's blaming someone and that's not fair so let's just stick to blaming Bush and McCain and the Republicans.

I don't know. I still think I/we are right about this -- McCain should have been pounding this from the get-go -- but they do, after all, have the data, and lots of smart people analyzing it. So who knows.

But I don't get it -- it seems to me that the Ayers stuff is more "unfair" than the Fannie stuff. I don't think either are unfair, of course, but if I was going to pick an issue, gun to my head, as "more unfair," it would be Ayers.

So if there's something about women that makes them turn off from the blame on Fannie, I don't see how the Ayers stuff would be more effective.

One thing's for sure -- we need Palin to be an outright asset again. How we get there from here, I don't know.

posted by Ace at 01:29 PM

| Access Comments