CNN California poll finding Clinton up 15% was conducted by firm owned by long-time Clinton donor

[antiimperialist]

Even back in February last year, Vinod Gupta "gave $1,000" To the Hillary Clinton campaign, according to the NY Sun.

Back in July, The New York Times said this about Vinod Gupta "Many wealthy people have raised money for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign. But only Vinod Gupta has named a school building in India after her.

Who is Gupta? He purchased InfoUSA, parent company of Opinion Research, the company that polled Democrats in California today and found her leading by 15%.

From The NY Sun, back in May, 2007,

Mr. Gupta, the chairman and CEO of infoUSA, has been one of the most generous benefactors to causes affiliated with the Clintons. He donated $2 million to a national millennium celebration organized by Mrs. Clinton's White House office, according to a book published by her chief fund-raiser, Terence McAuliffe. Mr. Gupta also gave $1 million for the construction of Mr. Clinton's presidential library in Little Rock, Ark.

In 2000, Mr. Gupta gave $100,000 to support Mrs. Clinton's Senate bid and hosted a fund-raiser in his home that raised $100,000 more. "She was so good," he said of Mrs. Clinton's talk there, according to the Omaha World-Herald. "I think she is smarter than the president."

Mr. Gupta and his wife, Laurel, were also the Clintons' guests for a stay in the White House's Lincoln Bedroom in 1999. The entrepreneur said the omnipresent Secret Service took the luster off the visit. "You kind of feel like you're in jail," he told the Omaha paper.

The NYT continues,

Mr. Gupta, who arrived in Nebraska from India in 1967, was unusually successful in working his way into the Democratic fold, to the point where he found himself sleeping in the Clinton White House, vacationing with the former president and appointing the Democratic chairman, Terry McAuliffe, to the board of one of his companies. He gave consulting contracts worth $3 million to Mr. Clinton, and recently hired the son of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Because of those close links with Democrats, he stirred conflict-of-interest questions by buying a company that does presidential polling for CNN.

(emphasis added by me).

Do you still trust this poll?

[suston96]

1. How absurd. How long can a pollster achieve credibility under such favoritisms?

[Occam Bandage]

2. Until anyone shows me polls suggesting he is wrong, yes, I do.

People generally do not spend years building up a company's industry-wide reputation simply to blow it on one bogus poll.

[Lucinda]

3. Yup. I feel the same way.

[David Dunham]

4. But the LA Times poll today also has Hillary way ahead

[TeamJordan23]

5. Its the same poll: CNN/LA Times...Conducted by Opinion Research. nm