Posted 4:25 PM by Robert

Wrong Notes From The Note

It's hard to explain the generally very good Note opening its NEWS SUMMARY with this dissonance:

The best example of how degrading it can be to be a political reporter: USA Today 's classy Susan Page forced to write up the Gallup poll/joke "showing" the president with a mythical 13-point lead for the front page of her paper — thus suggesting Gallup's 2000 track record of wild swings might be replicated this cycle.

(Question it gives rise to: What's the real margin? A. 5-6 points, with Bush holding small- to medium-sized (surmountable) leads in most of the important battlegrounds.)

The Note is a function of ABC News, which put its own poll out from September 9 showing Mr. Bush with a 9% lead (Bush 52%, Kerry 43%, Nader 2%). Obviously the margins of error for the ABC poll and the Gallup poll make them quite consistent with each other. Add to that the fact observed by several tracking polls, including Rasmusssen,showing Bush-Cheney widening their lead by several points. And just now the CBS/NYTimes Poll is picking up a 9% Bush-Cheney lead. Is the second best example of how degrading it can be to be a political reporter the New York Times' anything-but-classy Adam Nagourney's forced to write up the CBS/NYTimes poll/joke "showing" the president with a mythical 9-point lead for the front page of his paper? Hey, just asking!

So where's the justification for the pompous over-confidence that allows the Note to decide ex cathedra that Gallup is "mythical" - even though the Gallup results are quite in line with ABC's own poll, the new CBS/NYT Poll and recent developments detected by other tracking polls? The Note's brief analysis focuses on the Pew Poll showing a tie. But, frankly, as noted in my prior post, that particular Pew Poll stinks.

UPDATE: Kausfiles has more.