The AP mangled its celebrated Obama polling results claiming Democratic defections

[bigtree]

from Eric Boehlert at Media Matters: http://mediamatters.org/blog/201010180028

October 18, 2010

AP's Liz Sidoti wrote: http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Fhosted2.ap.org%2FAPDEFAULT%2Fgungrey%2FArticle_2010-10-17-US-AP-Poll-Obama-Voters%2Fid-eb374429c6a14d888196d1af798f1939

President Barack Obama's winning coalition from 2008 has crumbled and his core backers are dispirited. It's now Republicans who stand to benefit from an electorate that's again craving change.

Nearly two years after putting Obama in the White House, one-quarter of those who voted for the Democrat are defecting to the GOP or considering voting against the party in power this fall.


The polling results are just horrific news for Obama, right? Well, if the results actually matched what Sidoti wrote up, the answer would be yes. But the results don't match her breathless reporting . . .

According to the AP's own results, 73 percent of Obama voters approve of the job he's doing as president, while 83 percent think he deserves to be re-elected. But at the AP that' qualifies as "dispirited" and signs of "disillusionment" and "pessimism"?

As for Sidoti's claim, placed very high up in the article, that one-in-four Obama voters are "defecting to the GOP"? That's just plain wrong. Asked specifically if they would vote for a Republican candidate in this year's midterm election, exactly seven percent of Obama voters said they would do that in November.

Sidoti appeared to have simply looked at the 76 percent who said they "will support the Democrat in their House district," and decided the other 24 percent were going to vote Republican. But of those 24 percent, 13 percent told the AP they didn't know how they were going to vote in November.

read more: http://mediamatters.org/blog/201010180028

[Joanne98]

1. AP=TOOL

[regnaD kciN]

7. Not just tool. Remember...

...a few years ago, the new head of the AP (a close friend of Karl Rove, who urged the latter to stand tall against the "persecution" he was receiving in the Plame-gate investigation) announced that neutral or impartial reporting was a thing of the past, and that there was nothing wrong with the news service's stories taking a partisan slant. Any surprise AP stories are living up to his dictates?

[bluestateguy]

2. And I saw Liz Sidoti's name and was not surprised

Part of the Georgetown cocktail party elite.

[bigtree]

12. no surprise

. . . to see so many conservative-influenced outlets still feeding off of this one bogus report days and days after it first surfaced.

[Desertrose]

3. Too much media spin can make you dizzy.

It'll be what it is...and hopefully the repubs will be VERY disappointed.

[ddeclue]

4. Classic..

Black is white. Up is down. Believe whatever we say. NOT...

[Scurrilous]

5. K & R

:thumbsup:

[librechik]

6. it's amazing how anti-democrat various news sources sound

the radio news on XM America Left (CBS) is horribly slanted against Obama in particular

[bigtree]

11. msnbc today

positively falling over themselves to proclaim republicans victorious

[gratuitous]

8. George W. Bush would have killed for those "dispirited" numbers

Wait, he did kill. Thousands. And he's still wallowing in the sub-freezing poll numbers. Isn't it odd how long Bush remained our "popular wartime president" and how briefly Obama enjoyed any approval? Bush, whose approval numbers didn't crack 40 his last two or three years in office was still touted on his popularity for months on end, while Obama is somehow unpopular with numbers 20 points higher.

Darn you, librul media!

[TexasObserver]

9. I read it, and the headline lied about the results.

And it failed to reveal the dissatisfaction among GOP voters with their party.

[Arkana]

10. The AP loves to write anti-Obama crap.

Especially Ron Fournier and Liz Sidoti--they're two of the worst offenders.

[Number23]

13. On what damn planet does "seven percent" turn into "one in four??"

As for Sidoti's claim, placed very high up in the article, that one-in-four Obama voters are "defecting to the GOP"? That's just plain wrong. Asked specifically if they would vote for a Republican candidate in this year's midterm election, exactly seven percent of Obama voters said they would do that in November.

That type of shoddy journalism is completely inexcusable. And of course, there were a bunch of folks here eating up this BS with a knife and fork.