If you are looking for evidence of media bias, look no further than how the local media selectively covers the churn of presidential polls that have been coming out.
Here is the cheat sheet…polls that are good for Obama draw in-depth analysis and review; polls that speak well to Romney’s chances get ignored.
As case in point, consider John Ingold’s story online this morning where he herald’s the notoriously biased PPP poll, a poll showing that Obama is surging with Independents.
As Mitt Romney was giving a speech in Jefferson County on Sunday night to open what will likely be the defining 11 days of his campaign, a new poll came out that is potentially worrisome for the Republican presidential nominee.
It’s not the headline-grabbing 6-point lead for President Barack Obama that the Public Policy Polling survey of likely Colorado voters found. It’s how the survey got to that number.
Wanna report PPP? OK, fine. But then maybe the Post should also report the findings of Rasmussen too. Why wouldn’t they? Well maybe it is because Rasmussen’s most recent survey showed Romney leading.
From The Hill last week:
Mitt Romney has a slight advantage over President Obama in the critical battleground state of Colorado, according to a survey released Tuesday from conservative polling outlet Rasmussen.
Romney leads with 47 percent support over Obama at 45 percent, according to the survey of 500 likely voters. That’s within the poll’s 4.5 percent margin of error.
To be fair, Ingold reported on the issues with PPP’s sampling and the fact that their finding on Independents is out of whack with both Purple Strategies latest polling and The Denver Post‘s own Colorado poll. But he still gave PPP’s poll plenty of ink, while ignoring Rasmussen’s results.
The Left likes to question the credibility of Rasmussen. Their attacks ring hollow, as numerous post mortems on the 2004 and 2008 races show the Rasmussen survey has been the most accurate in presidential elections past.
This cycle, The New York Times’ polling expert, Nate Silver, found that Rasmussen was one of the most reliable pollsters, with a 1.1 point Republican house effect, while PPP had more than double the bias at a 3.1 point Democrat house effect.
The Denver Post doesn’t have a corner on Obama-loving. Last week Eli Stokols reported that another poll, one conducted by Purple Strategies, was the first conducted since Romney’s notorious 47 percent comments, and that the Purple poll showed Romney’s 47 percent remarks had pushed Romney down in the polls.
DENVER — The first poll conducted since Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks surfaced in a video on Monday shows President Barack Obama leading the GOP nominee in three swing states, including Colorado.
But as with The Denver Post, Mr. Stokols apparently has Rasmussen amnesia.
Rasmussen conducted their poll on September 17, when the only news story of the day was about Romney’s 47% comment. With respondents to the survey being inundated with news accounts of Romney’s comments, it’s fair to say that was the first poll to come out after the comments, not Purple Strategies.
While Stokols was the only member of the Capitol press corps to cover the Rasmussen poll when it was released, he suddenly forgot about it when latching onto the press-driven narrative that the 47% comment had tarnished Romney.
Media bias comes not only in how reporters cover polls, but what polls they choose to cover. Somehow, reports on positive polling for Romney always seem to end up on the editing room floor.