Since when is a three-point lead neck-and-neck? Only when a Republican is in the lead, apparently. This morning, Colorado woke up to the shock-the-world news that U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman was leading in a head-to-head poll against incumbent liberal U.S. Senator Michael Bennet in a Quinnipiac Poll that evaluated the two in a 2016 U.S. Senate race.
Unfortunately, The Denver Post views a three-point lead as “a statistical tie”…but only when the Republican is ahead. Let’s flashback to 2010 when Hickenlooper was ahead of Tancredo in a poll…by three points. From 2010:
Republican Ken Buck and Democrat Michael Bennet are tied in the U.S. Senate contest, and Democrat John Hickenlooper holds a slight edge over American Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo in the governor’s race, according to a new poll released Monday.
The results from Public Policy Polling, a Democratic pollster, show Buck and Bennet are tied with 47 percent support each. The PPP gubernatorial-race survey shows Hickenlooper at 47 percent, Tancredo at 44 percent and Republican Dan Maes at 5 percent.
Just so you understand the rules, PeakNation™, we will outline them for you. If a Republican is ahead slightly, it’s a statistical tie. If a Democrat is ahead, he or she holds a slight edge.
Not only is the Post‘s reporting on this inconsistent, but it does the newspaper a disservice. Reading that Coffman and Bennet are close is not terribly surprising. Reading a headline that Coffman is actually beating Bennet without even being a candidate? That’s interesting and more likely to grab eyeballs. Hey, Greg Moore, we’re just looking out for your best interests here. You can thank us later.