God, this is getting tiresome. We mentioned the current Newsweek poll below, and spent a lot of time, as did several like minded blogs, trashing those big, corrupt Newsweek polls of early and late September (to get those 15 points). Evidently, the current editorial line dictating poll results is that Bush had a good debate #3, so he gets a bounce, and then Newsweek can show, in the next two issues, the race tightening up once again as Comeback Kid II races towards the finish line (and remember, we have an October Surprise to buttress this editorial choice). How do we know? Easy (via Kerry Spot):

Kerry Spot reader Meg e-mails in confirmation: Newsweek polled 354 Republicans, 317 Democrats and 284 Independents, a 37%-33%-29% breakdown. Their previous poll had Republicans 35%, Democrats 37%, Independents 28%.

So Newsweek is back to oversampling Republicans to get the results it wants for a story undoubtedly written before the poll was complete. As Jim Geraghty wisely counsels: “Do not get excited or depressed, my friends. The media poll respondent selection by party giveth, the media poll respondent selection by party taketh away.”

So enough on Newsweek. In Kerry Spot there was also a reference to a Mickey Kaus story, and there we saw something that was really funny, Kaus’s First Rule of Jouralism, which states that

you should always generalize wildly from your own personal experience.

Words to live by.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 16th, 2004 at 2:59 pm and is filed under General, New Media, Polling. 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.