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TPM Polls - Fair and Balanced?
In the past week, there has been a renewed discussion about whether Democratic candidates should boycott FOX News because of its long and successful record of attacking Democratic politicians and progressive leaders while promoting right wing bigotry and propaganda. The outrage among some of the liberal blogosphere against Barack Obama was especially strong after his appearance on the Sunday Fox news program with Chris Wallace.
While I am an Obama supporter, I personally disagreed with his decision to go on Fox and I am not going to defend it. However, I accept his position that he is willing to meet with his enemies as well as his friends. So in that context he did not “take Fox on” as TPM's Greg Sargent had been led to believe. As a result, Greg had a column on April 27 titled “Obama Doesn’t “Take Fox On”, After All” in which he seemed to be quite indignant about Obama’s non-confrontational performance. Said Greg,
“at no point did he draw attention to Fox's spreading of lies about him or critique the network in a general sense.”Given that TPM was among the blog sites that made an issue of Obama’s appearance, I was quite disgusted when I opened up TPM Election Central and saw that all 6 polls shown in the current poll tracker are from FOX News! Why in the world is TPM legitimizing FOX News by presenting their poll results?
It’s not as if TPM doesn’t have enough polls to choose from. In fact, the large number of widely varying daily polls is becoming quite annoying, along with TPM's increasingly selective HEADLINES splashed across the front page that announce these polls as if they are breaking news.
In my opinion, TPM should be more selective in the polls that it chooses to include in its poll tracker and especially it should verify the objectivity of the polling organizations. While polls can be quite useful, they can also be used to manipulate the public perception. FOX News is not an objective or credible organization and TPM loses credibility when it includes their polls in its poll tracker.
Comments (18)
I like that they post all the polls they can get. The Election Central site is for election junkies, not for people that need polls intepretated for them.
April 30, 2008 10:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't say anything about needing polls interpreted for us. I like poll tracker since you can either take the results at face value or you can check out the details of the polling questions, the demographics, etc.
However, I think the integrity of the polling service should be reasonably sound. FOX News is NOT an unbiased, ethical organization.
Also, how do you know that TPM posts all the polls they can get? It seems more reasonable that on some level TPM does have to choose which polls to include. If not, then why not present polls taken by right-wing Christian news media or by white supremacist organizations or by other Republican-leaning groups?
April 30, 2008 11:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Come on. TPM posts every new poll. Relax.
April 30, 2008 11:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
WHY DON'T YOU MERELY CHECK OUT REALCLEARPOLITICS.COM EVERY DAY. THEY HAVE ALL POLLS - CONSOLIDATED AND AVERAGED.
THAT WAY YOU CAN HAVE ACCESS TO ALL LEGITIMATE POLLS EVERY DAY.
May 1, 2008 12:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's what I do. Sometimes Pollster.com has the more recent polls sooner. I start there.
May 1, 2008 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is silly. Only Hillis44.org posts polls based on what they say. Greg and Eric, and even Josh from time to time, tend to join in the silly hyperventilation over movement inside the margin of error sometimes, but they're just reporting them as they happen.
May 1, 2008 12:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, I have a little trouble buying this one.
May 1, 2008 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
They post every poll they can find, as does http://www.pollster.com/ . You can look there to check them, they have mostly the same ones.
BTW, I hate Fox as much as anyone, but their polls seem ok. For evidence, see how their measure of Bush's approval compares to the average of all polls: http://www.pollster.com/FoxPollsterBushApproval.php . Their a little high, but not way off. FWIW, my guess is that whatever bias they have is not intentional, but due to relatively more liberals hanging up when they hear it's a Fox News poll.
May 1, 2008 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not sure they posted the poll that included Nader. Did they? Perhaps they did. Don't know.
May 1, 2008 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, if the Fox polls are biased, then Josh is doing us a favor by reporting them because he'll later be able to call them out as either outliers or just completely wrong.
But I doubt they are baised anyway. That's not where the Fox slant expresses itself. Instead it's in their selection of stories, guests and commentators.
May 1, 2008 2:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I misread the title of this post as TPM Trolls: Fair and Balanced?
May 1, 2008 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
The margin of error has a typically has specific statistical meaning. Assuming a random Gaussian distribution of errors in the polls, 95% of the time the poll statistic is within the value +/- the margin of error. So when your lead is equal to than the margin of error, you can say with 97.5% confidence that you're ahead (because 2.5% of the time, you're really behind, but 2.5% of the time you're ahead by more than twice the margin of error.
That's why I detest the phrase "statistical tie": it's not really accurate to say that a race is a dead heat simply because a lead is smaller than the margin of error. You're much better off being ahead by 2% than behind by the same amount, even though both are often referred to as "statistical ties".
Now I do agree it's silly to hyperventilate about polls, especially when we're still 6 months out. But the reason is because the political landscape will change a lot over the next 6 months, not that candidates may not be moving relative to each other when changes happen inside the margin of error. Actually, I find that Josh et al. tend to be appropriately cautious in reporting and interpreting polls, frequently hedging and noting where a given poll is far off the mark from others. Their headlines are more sensational than their stories.
May 1, 2008 3:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama might do some good if he sttacks the Fon News vreeps OFF the show, but On the show, remember he is talking to Fox news fans (I can't watch it, I let Newshounds and Media Matters do it for me...) so why would he make such a stupid mistake.
We all agree Fox is a fake news program, but Obama going on their show, in front of their audiences, and telling them the truth about themselves would only give them another layer of spite.
i think he handled it quite well, but I am in agreement with Greg that they are scum, I just don't think Obama could have effectively influenced their brick-brained audience.
He did show a lot of courage just facing them, and who knows, maybe a couple dittoheads in the audience had a wake-up moment.
May 1, 2008 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think TPM should post all the polls .I want all the information But that Obama was right to go on Fox. I want its viewers to get all the informations. Well, at least more.
And he did a good job.(as HRC did on O'Reilly)
If her survives the electoral disaster of Wright's Q&A it will be because he partly immunized himself with the preceding day's Foxathon.
OBTW having read the transcript I stress ELECTORAL disaster. Wright said nothing indefensible per se. But indefensible
in the eight days left for Obama to convince white Indiana voters he doesn't blame them for the "sins of their fathers" .
It's understandable that Wright remembers Emmet Till. Joe Sodbuster in Muncie doesn't.And doesn't want to hear about it now. Or elect someone who might remind him.
May 1, 2008 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Something related and VERY interesting regarding the subject TPM's objectivity.
Clintonite Sidney Blumenthal is using Right Wing foes to attack Obama...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/sidney-blumenthal-uses-fo_b_99695.html
Among the recipients is a fellow named Josh Marshall.
Interesting, to say the least...
May 1, 2008 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
How does this relate to TPM's objectivity?
May 1, 2008 8:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
From the article...
"One of Blumenthal's associates scoffs at the notion that there's anything vaguely conspiratorial about these emails and that a number of the people on the list-serve are also the authors of the pieces he sends out. "They're just Sid's friends," he told me. This is, in fact, the very definition of an echo chamber. People in the opinion-shaping business also seek to influence other opinion-makers, who then bounce their ideas through their overlapping outlets -- newspapers, magazines, talk shows, websites, blogs, and social and political fundraising circles. The connections are so incestuous that it's hard to untangle where the "feedback loop" begins and ends?"
May 1, 2008 9:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
ARGH!
BETTER THE FOX ON TV THAN THE WOLF IN SHEEPISH CLOTHING.
OR WEAR A COCOON SKIN CAP. WHEN YOU GO CACAMPING.
MATES! ARISE AND AROUSE! WENCH HILLARY! MUSTER THE NUMBERS.
STATISTICS ARE WE ALL.
DILUTE! DILUTE!
ARGH!
May 1, 2008 8:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
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