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Sunday, February 24, 2019

Polling Games The Media Plays

You have to wonder sometimes why the mainstream media bothers with polls.  It would be easier just to publish their opinions and claim it is the voice of the people.  It would also be equally unreliable.  I say this as I look at the two latest polls taken in New Hampshire among voters who can participate in the Democrat primary for president in 2020.  In the poll taken by UMass, Joe Biden leads the pack by 8 percentage points with Bernie Sanders second.  In the poll taken at the same time by Emerson, Sanders is up by 2 points over Biden.  There is no way that this is a statistical error; the difference is too great.  Similarly, UMass found support for Amy Klobuchar at 1% while Emerson put her support at 8%.  Again, this is not just a statistical fluke.

So we know that at least one, if not both, of these polls is erroneous.  You have to wonder how the pollsters could get things so wrong.  Is one of these polls slanted to help one candidate or another?  Did Emerson give a bump up to Klobuchar who seems stuck at 1-2% in every other poll taken regarding 2020?  We have no way to tell, but it certainly seems reasonable.

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