JONATHAN CHAIT SEPTEMBER 16, 2010
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Commentary's Jennifer Rubin offers a glimpse into the paranoid conservative mind:
The New York Times poll (invariably more positive for the Democrats than other surveys) contains little good news for the Democrats. The Times has Obama’s approval at 45 percent, near his all-time low of 44 percent. His disapproval rating of 47 percent is a record in this poll...
The Gray Lady is preparing its readers for the day of reckoning, edging its polling closer to more credible competing polls just in time for Election Day. (Looks bad when you miss the final results by a mile.)
So apparently Rubin thinks the Times has been rigging its polls all along to boost Obama and inflate his apparent unpopularity. But now, as the election nears, it needs to start preparing readers for the "real results," and to cover up its past rigging. So it is slowly un-rigging the results to bring them closer into line with reality.
I would really like to read Rubin's detailed explanation as to precisely how this process works. Exactly who is making this decision? Just what are they doing to rig the numbers? Inquiring minds want to know.
5 comments
Wasn't Commentary a respectable publication once upon a time? I seem to remember it being taken seriously at some point.
- Simon Greenwood
September 16, 2010 at 10:19am
If you looked at the demographics in the NYT poll on Park51, the demographics were skewed to people who read the NYT, lived in Manhattan, and disproportionately African-American and Protestant relative to the actual demographics of NYC. Based on prior polls by Quinnipiac and Siena, these were the sub-groups more inclined to approve of Park51. So, take a look at the NYT political polling to see if they skew the demographics of the respondent base instead of a gratuituous whack at JRu. Not that too many people pay any attention to the NYT anymore.
- K2K
September 16, 2010 at 10:33am
Yes , Simon, it was. I read Commentary regularly in the late 1970s through much of the 1980s and it was a quality publication then, whether one agreed or disagreed with neoconservatism. But now, it is a disaster area. Jonathan, don't you know? The mad genius, Nate Silver, is behind the tweaking of the New York Times polls. They have contracted out to FiveThirtyEight the job of bringing their pro-Obama polls back to earth. The devious liberal media never rest.
- liberal reformer
September 16, 2010 at 11:32am
It's only our newspaper of record, widely distributed across the world, and an entity whose coverage other US newspapers take their lead from. But why let that stand in the way of taking a shot at 'em?
- Curran1
September 16, 2010 at 11:37am
What was that old Woody Allen line from Annie Hall? Put mags Dissent and Commentary together and you have Dissentary
- NR027810
September 16, 2010 at 12:30pm