Has Fox news declared its bias with the 2004 polls? Should we discount them

[Blue Rectangle]

Bush Approval in June:
Annenberg                    June 16-30    50%
CBS/NY Times                June 23-27    42%
Fox News                      June 22-23    49%
CNN/USA Today/Gallup June 21-23    49%
ABC News/Wash Post    June 17-20    47%

If Fox is so biased, why is Bush's approval right in line with the others?  If you want bias, consider CBS/NY Times--there's a winning combo.

[Blue Rectangle]

True, the disapproval ratings show Fox with less in common with the others, although +5 in the Fox poll is not way off when compared to Annenberg (+3) or even the CNN poll (+0).  CBS with -9 is insane.

The head-to-head matchups are similar: Fox shows Bush's percentage to be similar to the others, but Kerry's support is less than average.  Sounds to me like Fox's polls are just fine, as long as you concentrate on Bush's absolute numbers and don't read to much into point leads.  It's similar to the difference between registered and likely polls: likely polls should, in theory, produce a better measure of an election, but the methods used to extract likelys may introduce additional errors.

In any case, it is worth noting that Opinion Dynamics is the polling firm and that they also do polls for Harvard and for Planned Parenthood (hardly right-wing organizations!)