{"id":9925,"date":"2013-06-15T12:19:47","date_gmt":"2013-06-15T19:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=9925"},"modified":"2013-06-15T12:26:05","modified_gmt":"2013-06-15T19:26:05","slug":"fox-news-math-challenged-poll-analysis-strikes-again-in-massachusettes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=9925","title":{"rendered":"Fox News Math-Challenged Poll Analysis Strikes Again In Massachusetts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year Fox News suffered some of the most embarrassing episodes of journalistic failure in recent history. They were so determined to orchestrate a Republican victory that they repeatedly shifted their analysis of presidential polling based on whether or not their candidate was ahead. If Romney was leading in any poll, Fox would hype it relentlessly and celebrate the wisdom of the pollsters. But if Obama took the lead, Fox feverishly denounced the polls<\/a> as biased and unbelievable. They even went so far as to ignore their own polls<\/a> if the result was favorable to Obama.<\/p>\n

Late in the presidential campaign an obscure blogger published what he claimed were “unskewed”<\/em> polls. He re-weighted the partisan breakdowns on the published polling to presume higher numbers of Republicans in the electorate. After Obama’s decisive victory, Fox News, and the rest of the GOP establishment, were shamed by their diversion from reality. Their audience was furious at having been so flagrantly misled. A humbled Fox then fired and\/or benched their most blatant info-manglers like Dick Morris and Karl Rove, and promised to do better in the future.<\/p>\n

\"Fox<\/center>
\n<\/p>\n

Well, so much for that promise. This morning’s headline on Fox News blared an utterly false<\/a> rendering of poll results in the Massachusetts special election to fill John Kerry’s senate seat. The article, with no byline or source (but numerous grammatical errors), stated flatly that “Polls Show Gomez, Markey close in special election race for Mass senate seat.”<\/em> However, that can only be true if you consider a 9.3 average advantage for Markey as being “close.”<\/em> The lede paragraph declares…<\/p>\n

“The Senate race is (sic)<\/em> Massachusetts is deadlocked heading into the final weeks […] Yet most polls show first-time Republican candidate and former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez within just several percentage points of Democratic Rep. Edward Markey”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, most polls show Markey with a sweeping lead. The RealClearPolitics average<\/a> of polls for the race give Markey a 9.3% lead, and some polls have his lead as high as 12%. How Fox takes that data and describes the race as “deadlocked”<\/em> is beyond explanation. What’s more, in a story that is ostensibly reporting poll results, the polling data is not even mentioned until the twenty-first paragraph of a twenty-four paragraph article. The whole thing reads like a press release from the Gomez campaign if it were written by a functionally illiterate press agent.<\/p>\n

What Fox hopes to achieve with this brazenly dishonest reporting is hard to figure. If they think that by manufacturing a fake competitiveness in the race it will improve Gomez’s prospects for victory, they have learned nothing from their embarrassing behavior last year. More likely, they are merely fulfilling their role as the GOP PR agency whose duty is to hype Republican positions and politicians without regard for the truth. And if this is a prelude to how Fox will conduct itself in next year’s mid-term elections, we can expect another season of sensationally skewed reporting that woefully misinforms their gullible audience. Actually, it should be kinda fun.<\/p>\n

Be Sure To Like News Corpse On Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year Fox News suffered some of the most embarrassing episodes of journalistic failure in recent history. They were so determined to orchestrate a Republican victory that they repeatedly shifted their analysis of presidential polling based on whether or not their candidate was ahead. If Romney was leading in any poll, Fox would hype it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[152,1],"tags":[451,33],"class_list":["post-9925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election","category-general","tag-ed-markey","tag-fox-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-2A5","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7113,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7113","url_meta":{"origin":9925,"position":0},"title":"Obama Surging Ahead Of Romney In Fox News Poll That Fox News Ignores","author":"Mark NC","date":"5\/17\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"For additional evidence that Fox News is the PR agency for the Republican Party, note the feverishly excited treatment that Fox News gives to polling when the results favor Mitt Romney: In the past two months Fox Nation has posted at least seven articles on election polling and every single\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7797,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7797","url_meta":{"origin":9925,"position":1},"title":"Fox News Continues To Ignore Polls Favorable To Obama","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/17\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"A new poll by the Fox News house pollsters, Rasmussen, shows that President Obama has gained on Mitt Romney since the announcement of Paul Ryan as Romney's vice-presidential running mate. That's a striking achievement for Obama considering the notorious right-wing bias of Rasmussen. But first, a little background... Last week\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10321,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=10321","url_meta":{"origin":9925,"position":2},"title":"Fox Nation vs. Reality: Clinton Polling Ahead Of Every Republican Is “Underwhelming”","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/7\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"While it is still more than three years before the next presidential election, Fox News is desperately spinning polling results in order to diminish the broad popularity of Hillary Clinton. In an article on Fox Nation (the notoriously dishonest Fox News community site), a poll conducted (pdf) by Monmouth University\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8187,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=8187","url_meta":{"origin":9925,"position":3},"title":"A Pictorial Presentation Of The Polling Schizophrenia At Fox News","author":"Mark NC","date":"10\/10\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It may seriously be time to have the folks at Fox committed to an institution for evaluation. They have become utterly unhinged, particularly with regard to election polling which is notoriously volatile. So without further ado, here's a graphic illustration of the depths of their dementia. First, Fox News loves\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":34412,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=34412","url_meta":{"origin":9925,"position":4},"title":"Worst.President.Ever: Trump Hypes Biased Poll That Still Shows Him At 50 Percent Unfavorable","author":"Mark NC","date":"4\/17\/2017","format":false,"excerpt":"From the day Donald Trump was inaugurated he has suffered through the lowest approval ratings of any president on record. And his repeated failures in office haven't helped to dig him out of that hole. Consequently, he resorts to diversionary tactics to take attention away from his floundering administration. More\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Donald Trump","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/trump-loser.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/trump-loser.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/trump-loser.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":46084,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=46084","url_meta":{"origin":9925,"position":5},"title":"Trump Clings to Pitiful Fox News Polling Analysis that Mangles Reality","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/2\/2020","format":false,"excerpt":"As Election Day draws nearer, Donald Trump's prospects for reelection become more distant. All of the national polls show him losing to Joe Biden by substantial margins. Even worse, Trump is losing in every crucial swing state. Biden is even competitive in the traditionally red states of Texas and Georgia.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"Donald Trump","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/trump-loser.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/trump-loser.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/trump-loser.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9925"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9928,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925\/revisions\/9928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}