Are FOX's polls rigged/slanted?

[Nym90]

The media is biased, sure. They are biased in favor of ratings.

They are businesses, and thus have a bias in favor of making money, and nothing else. They will put out whatever they feel people want to hear.

Gallup's polls have been very accurate throughout the years. Since 1936 their final preelection poll has only been off by an average of 2.2% and since 1960 only by 1.5%.

[Nym90]

No, that wasn't Gallup, it was a magazine of some sort (which I think went out of business shortly thereafter, lol). They polled only people with phones and predicted a landslide win for Landon in 1936.

Gallup had Roosevelt up 56-44 in their final poll, which still underestimated the FDR win quite a bit (he won 61-37) but at least they were a lot more accurate than anybody else that year.

[Nym90]

Yes, though that's still slightly less of a lead for Bush than Fox had.

It should also be slightly troubling to Bush supporters that he consistently, in all polls, gets a lower percentage saying they'd vote for him than those that say they approve of his job performance. It appears that Bush needs about a 54-55% job approval rating to get reelected.

[Nym90]

Sure, he still can win. Anything's possible. But that would require a complete reversal of what has gone on for a long time now, which has been that Bush's approval rating has been higher than his reelect numbers. It hasn't just been in the last few weeks, for a long time his reelect numbers have been lower than his approval rating.

As for the discrepancy from one poll to the other, the differences are almost all within the margin of error. None of the polls are biased, it is just to be expected that there will be slight variations. Most of the polls have a 4 percent margin of error for each side, so if the race is tied, you would expect to see some polls showing Bush 8 points ahead and some showing Kerry 8 points ahead.

[Nym90]

But you forgot to mention that all of the networks had taken Florida out of Gore's column before about 10 PM Eastern. It was deemed too close to call by all networks until it was called for Bush at 2:16 AM, which was of course also a mistake, it was clearly too close to have been called for Bush, as the media should have known about the automatic recount in races in Florida that are closer than 0.5%. This call for Bush gave him a huge advantage in the recount process in the minds of the public, as he was perceived as having already won the election, when in fact Florida never should have been called for Bush on election night either since it was way too close.

As for all of your call times for CNN...didn't Fox also call those states at close to the same times? All of the networks were taking their data from VNS (Voter News Service) and all had similar call times. VNS was basing their data on the exit polls and results from key swing precincts. If neither of these turned out to be reliable, then it shouldn't be a surprise that the calls would be a bit off.

And the polls were closed in the Eastern time zone portion of Florida at 7 PM Eastern. Rather said that the polls were closed in the majority of the state, he didn't say that all polls in Florida were closed.

[Nym90]

The polls were only open for 11 more minutes in the panhandle after NBC called it, 6 minutes after CBS called it, and they were already closed when ABC called it. Anybody voting that late would almost certainly already be in line to vote, or at least on their way to the polls already, and thus very likely wouldn't have heard the news. Even if they did, there were still local races to be decided, plus the election nationwide was still too close to call even with Gore winning Florida, so I can't see how a significant number of votes would have turned around their cars and headed home. Plus, as has been mentioned, it would have caused Gore's voters to stay home there too.

[Nym90]

Yes, but ultimately the election will be a referendum on Bush, not Kerry. If Bush's approval rating is low, he won't win unless he can make Kerry out to be incompetent (which is highly unlikely). That strategy has never worked in the past. I think that you have to run a mostly positive campaign to win if you are an incumbent.

[Nym90]

I don't see him as weak at all, I think he has a lot of strengths. I guess we'll just have to see what happens though.

[Nym90]

That will only get them so far. Bush's job performance will be the main issue, not Kerry's ideology and home state. Bush can't win with only a negative campaign.

Hopefully this is just you being your good ol' cynical self.