Newsweek editor Evan Thomas promised Kerry a boost of 15 points,in his election bid against George Bush and so far Mr. Thomas is doing a good job of delivering as the campaign reaches the home stretch. Four weeks ago, we reported in this space the Newsweek poll that had Bush up 52% to 41%. Today, the Newsweek poll among registered voters has it 46% for Bush, 49% for Kerry. So in the last month, Mr Thomas’s man is up 8%, and the President is down 6%, so Newsweek has so far delivered on getting John Kerry a 14 point swing — almost home!

We noted a couple of days after reporting last month’s poll that the big Bush lead of 11% among registered voters was not obtained honestly, but by manipulating the poll sample by oversampling Republicans, in order to subsequently report a Kerry comeback. That is precisely what has happened.

Newsweek cooked the books in its fraudulent poll a month ago, and we have no reason to believe that it is not cooking its results again, both to sell magazines and to boost its favored candidate. It is no coincidence that the poll numbers are released just in time for the Sunday yak-fests.

If you subscribe to Newsweek, this would be a perfectly appropriate moment to stop doing so, unless of course you like being manipulated by newsmen with an aggressive and dishonest agenda. Oh, you thought Dan Rather was the only egregious one? One look at this Beldar post should cure you of that misguided notion.

The Simple Methodology of Creating a Fraudulent Poll

From LGF, Powerline, and lots of other places we have a breakdown of Dems and Reps in the two polls, and talk about a pathetic forgery: these polls make Bill Burkett look like Rembrandt or Picasso. Take a gander from LGF:

September 11, 2004: NEWSWEEK POLL

391 Republicans (plus or minus 6)
300 Democrats (plus or minus 7)
270 Independents (plus or minus 7)

NEWSWEEK POLL: First Presidential Debate

345 Republicans (plus or minus 6)
364 Democrats (plus or minus 6)
278 Independents (plus or minus 7)

You don’t need an 800 on the SAT or a degree in statistics to follow what Newsweek did to cook up these fake results. In the most recent poll, R’s go 89% for Bush, D’s go 86% Kerry (with I’s splitting 37/42 R/D, or about even). Follow me: the whole result of the poll is dictated by how many Republicans and Democrats you include in your sample — that’s it, that’s the ball game.

In the first poll, 57% of the sample was Republican versus Democrat, so Bush won big. In the second poll 51% of the sample was Democrat versus Republican, So Kerry won narrowly. This is a poor joke, rank hucksterism, patent medicine from the back of a wagon. Newsweek is playing the readers of Newsweek for fools.

Newsweek is committing no crime in hawking these phony polls, since they are forging nothing. However, if you believe them, you are guilty of being too dumb to breathe.

Getting the numbers Newsweek wants means manipulating the process of polling

This, via Kerry Spot, from Political Vice Squad, on Newsweek’s Saddam-like torturing of the numbers and the polling process so that it can get the results it wants:

[T]his “poll” strictly was limited to the “Pacific and Mountain time zones [on Thursday night].” In other words, registered voters from the following states completely were excluded: Texas, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, and the entire old south.

And comments from PVS’s reader Oak Leaf:

It is problematic that the men who were surveyed support Kerry 47% to 45%. Not even Bob Dole did this poorly in 1996. This indicates that they undersampled Republican men. This would, incidentally, make sense in light of the fact that almost all of the sample was done on Friday. What are large swaths of Republican men doing on Friday nights in those red states in the fall? A. During the day they are working; B. During the evening they are at HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL GAMES….[Kerry] has an insignificant lead among women and Independents…but he also has a similar lead among men.

Revised and Extended Conclusion

This poll is actually very good news for President Bush, exactly the opposite of the impression that Newsweek is trying to convey. The poll was taken at times and in places specifically to exclude Republican men, in the West on Thursday, on Friday evening, and on a weekend, so that Newsweek could cobble together enough Democrats and as few Republican men as a percent of the poll to produce the numbers it needed.

However, even with those heroic efforts, the President still looks to be in great shape, since, with all of the shenanigans that Newsweek pulled, it only has women breaking 48/44 Kerry, which number would ensure a Bush victory.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 2nd, 2004 at 6:01 pm and is filed under General, New Media, Polling, Red Shift, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.