See this is what Krugman has in mind when he criticizes the media for simply acting like a court stenographer giving you the literal facts of a story perhaps but without the context that they really inform you of what's going on.
They had a short post about the Gallup poll of likely voters that now shows Romney leading the President 52-45. They simply printed word for word that a "liberal" who was on Fox yesterday-Bob Beckel-said that if that poll is true "Obama's done."
Now Fox doesn't care about context and that's a given. They're happy just to talk up that one poll and ignore that it's an outlier and that real poll analysts like Nate Silver have pointed out that it's not very reliable at this point-it's unlikely that every other poll is wrong and Gallup is right.
However, shouldn't Politico even point out that there's more to this story than getting a "liberal" to say "if the Gallup poll is true, Obama'd done?"
"Liberal commentator Bob Beckel said Thursday on Fox News that “it is over” for President Barack Obama if a new poll that has the president trailing GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney is accurate."
"Gallup’s daily tracking poll of likely voters Tuesday put Romney up 52 percent to 45 percent, with the remainder undecided."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82606.html#ixzz29kn6K5wx
Beckel does push back a little but in a very feeble way, pointing out that after all if there's a margin of error of 4 points, it could after all be closer than 7. Beckel is like the only liberal I know who wouldn't be all over the fact that this Gallup poll is totally meaningless at this point. Not only does it totally contradict other tracking polls much less what we're seeing in the state polls-we got three state polls showing the President with a 6 point lead in Wisconsin, a 6 point lead in Michigan-up from 3 points last week-and 8 in Iowa-where a large chunk of voters have already voted-but it alos contradicts what Gallup's own registered voters poll and even the poll that tracks Obama's job approval numbers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/19/2012-polls-barack-obama-swing-states_n_1985645.html
Is it really credible that there is a 6 point swing for Romney from registered to likely voters? I mean a 6 point enthusiasm gap? Indeed, a tricky thing about likely voter polls is determining who are actually "likely voters."
Indeed some of the polls that are less regular like ABC/Washington Post and Maris seem to suggest that there has been a lot less movement in October than other polls suggest.
While Fox is going to just tell its viewers that Romney has a huge lead no matter what-what was new was Sean Hannity finally has some actual data to back up a claim he's been making all year, albeit some very much cherry picked data-Politico could actually point out at a minimum that there are a number who question Gallup at this point as it's at variance with what other polls are saying.
As far as Gallup goes, you wonder if they are going to have some soul searching over their likely voter polls now that they've proven to be such an outlier. Or are they simply going to "stay the course"-like George W. Bush did in Iraq?
To be sure Gallup is the single most presitgious poll out there. However, if this keeps up could that be in danger of changing?
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