Pew Pollster Admits Polls Unreliable: True Media Confessions Continue

Holy Gallup's Ghost !
Top Pollster Admits Early Election Polls Can’t Be Trusted
by David W. Moore

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The Sunday before the election, the Director of Pew Research, Andrew Kohut, admitted on NPR's "All Things Considered" what we pollsters have known all along, but have been able to keep out of the general public's consciousness.

It was the polling equivalent of the little child saying out loud, The emperor has no clothes!

Except that it was a pollster admitting this truth.

When NPR's Andrea Seabrook asked Kohut why the polls had shown such divergent readings throughout the campaign season, Kohut admitted that pre-election polls simply couldn't be trusted - at least not until just before people actually started to vote!

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LISTEN HERE ON NPR'S "ALL THINGS CONSIDERED"


Andrea Seabrook: "Why are the polls - the polls seem to be converging across the polls towards the sort of five-point lead for Obama, when they had been pretty disparate - there had been a lot of difference between them?"

Andrew Kohut: "The answer to that is that the closer we get to the election, the more crystallized public opinion is and therefore the more likely it is when we make a telephone call, we're going to get the same answers as another polling organization will get. These voters have made up their minds and there's not so many of 'I'll vote for this guy one day and if you call me tomorrow I'll vote for someone else.' So, it's pretty typical that the polls - rigorous polls - all come together in the final weeks."

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It was especially fortuitous for Pew that the polls all came together toward Election Day, for as Kohut acknowledged in the interview, only a few days earlier the Pew poll had shown Obama with a "boxcar kind of lead" - up by 15 points over McCain, a real outlier. That wouldn't have looked good.

WILDLY DISPARATE POLLS CONVERGE JUST BEFORE ELECTION DAY

Some of the other polls were showing a much closer race and had been for many days. But just in time for the election, the Pew poll suddenly bounced into line. Other polls that had been off the mark also mysteriously bounced in the same direction.

The veteran pollster, a former president of the Gallup Organization, where he first cut his teeth on the art of polling, was surprisingly candid about the limitations of polls during the election campaign.

What did the veteran pollster admit? What do those early polls really measure?

Continue reading: Holy Gallup's Ghost ! Top Pollster Admits Early Election Polls Can’t Be Trusted


by David W. Moore
Source/images: Holy Gallup's Ghost ! Top Pollster Admits Early Election Polls Can’t Be Trusted

John Edwards Affair: Edwards Admits Affair with Rielle Hunter

In a coldly-calculated political move, John Edwards has now admitted that he had an affair, but did not father Rielle Hunter's daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter.

In an interview with ABC News Nightline admitted that he had an affair with Rielle Hunter and lied about it while campaigning for President.

In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.

Edwards also denied he was the father of Hunter's baby girl, Frances Quinn, although the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate said he has not taken a paternity test.

Just a few days after leading Democrats called for Edwards to deny the affair or risk losing a prime speaking spot at the Democrat National Convention, Edwards did not deny the affair--something he has not done since a November 29, 2007 interview.

The political calculus is: Edwards hopes that his admission of having an affair will allow the incident to blow over, allowing him to procede with his political career.

According to ABC News, which has refused to report on the event previously, "Edwards said he knew he was not the father based on timing of the baby's birth on February 27, 2008. He said his affair ended too soon for him to have been the father."

The announcement may prove to raise more questions than it answered.

One question which immediately comes to mind: What was Edwards doing leaving the Bevrly Hilton at 2:40 in the morning, visiting a woman he says he did not love and her baby, which he says he did not father?

UPDATES to follow at DBKP.com

by Mondoreb