Dregs

If you had had the misfortune of wandering over to Drudge tonight, you would have noticed the following cryptic screamer (without a link to an article):


His sludgeness, Mr. Matt, is questioning whether the 16 news organizations listed above might all be wrong in their polls which have consistently shown Obama ahead of McCain at the national level. Your immediate response to this "question" probably reveals your political preference. Obama devotees are probably incensed at the Dreg Depot's ignoring of all pro-Obama news in favor of manufactured skepticism such as this headline. McCain grit pals are the ones ardently hoping against all evidence that the Grudge Resort is correct.

And a very small minority out there--known as the independents--wondered whether it is possible that Matt Fudge is hedging his bets by asking a question that could be read as being self-refuting, i.e., can sixteen independent polling outfits all be wrong in the same direction?

By a remarkable coincidence, Faux Noise, the sludge echo, leads its online political coverage tonight with the following gem of journalistic excellence:

Pollsters Struggle to Handicap Presidential Race: Barack Obama's leading in virtually every national poll, but his margin fluctuates wildly -- suggesting that in some cases, the numbers do in fact lie.

The article "finds" that even though virtually every poll out since late September has shown Obama ahead, his lead has varied wildly, from 1 to 13 points in the past two weeks alone. From this observation, Flax News infers that, naturally, McCain must be leading somewhere in some sets of voters, which means the polls are suspect, never mind that the overwhelming majority of polls have shown Obama ahead all the time. (I could point you to professional critiques of the "close" polls such as this one, but I'll spare you.) The compounding problem that is causing such fits to the poor pollster babies? Not a dearth of data, as one might expect, but an excess of the squigglies:

FOX News political analyst Karl Rove said by his count, there have been 177 national polls conducted as of Oct. 24, compared with 55 at the same time in 2004.
"The proliferation of polls, particularly polls run by universities that may not have the skill and capability that a professional polling outfit has, are really not helpful to the process, in my opinion," Rove said.

So, having more than three times the amount of data showing one candidate consistently ahead is the problem? What are the odds that that many trollsters could all be chucked into the polling feeding frenzy and almost all emerge with the same result?

The sharper-eyed among you would notice whom Flack Nays quoted above: yes, the Prez's favorite Turd Blossom himself (see #9). The other pollsters mentioned by the article in order to justify the title of this dingbat piece of journalism? Dana Blanton, FOX News polling director, and Karlyn Bowman, who studies public opinion for the American Enterprise Institute (I'll save you the suspense...they lean pro-McCain.)

All said, whom do you think this type of coverage best helps? McCain, in order to gin up some more enthusiasm? Or Obama, who has worried about complacency?