My letter to Keith Olbermann on his unfortunate poll segment

[featherman]

Dear Keith:

Ya know I love ya BUT you weren't well served by your staff in preparing for your segment on Kerry trailing in the polls.

First was your strange little teaser before the break:
"By any measure it is bad news for the Senator".

-At least one rather important measure is the Electoral College where the preponderance of analysts show Kerry leading with a pretty solid 264 (the Gore states + NH). Colorado is also now showing a Kerry lead while NV and FL are tied. Kerry is within 3 (less than M of E) in VA, OH, MO, AR and within 4 in NC. Perhaps your (I'm sure very fine and charming) staff is simply unaware that elections are decided by the Electoral College? Nah...that can't be.

- Another measure is the Rasmussen, Zogby, and Investor's Daily polls among others which show either Kerry or Bush up by about 2-3, depending, essentially tied and within the M of E.

-another measure is the rather dramatic Bush post-convention free fall in your own Newsweek poll from 11% to 6% in one week. "Bad news" for Kerry? Not really.

The segment itself and Ms. Page expounded on the theme, selectively showing negative polling results and ignoring the obvious. The TIME poll is quite odd in being such an outlier but a good staff might have checked the methodology since it does stick out like a sore thumb. Who were the "likely" voters? Did it overpoll GOP? How recent in such a fluid race? Etc.

I know Ms. Page was your guest and you were a gracious host. She was proud of her publication's Wisconsin poll and trumpeted it's 8 point lead for Bush ( M o E = 4) among likely voters. This is fine and newsworthy but "likely voters" is a subjective category that can skew results. More important, perhaps, than small sample state polls in this little game of crystal ball is electoral history and regional identification. The fact that Wisconsin has voted DEM for four straight elections (including Dukakis in 1988) means that it has never voted for ANY Bush for President. My money is on WI to go DEM again but who knows? I concede it may be close but it ain't gonna be more than +2 either way.

But what actually inspires me to write is the bit about the Zogby poll of Rural Voters showing Bush leading Kerry by 52-37. More "bad news" and a comment that Kerry "needs to do better". I nearly fell out of my chair. The MAIN POINT of this Zogby poll was to show how badly Bush was doing among this core GOP group. He is trailing by -7 from his 2000 percentage of 59% while Kerry is holding Gore's 37%.
With 8% rural Undecided (very high with a GOP incumbent) this is very bad news for Bush since undecideds generally break 60-40 or better for the challenger. Thus if Kerry gets an additional 5% here it translates to a 42% of the rural vote, considerably better than Gore while Bush at an estimated 55% will be considerably less (the other 3% to Nader,Other). Now this is just a poll and it may or may not hold up but the problem I am having with you, your staff, and the show this evening is that is was presented as a positive for Bush and a negative for Kerry! So I guess I need to remind your young staffers that Al Gore actually won the popular vote in 2000. Since this poll shows Kerry actually doing better than Gore, presenting it as "more bad news" was unprofessional and simply bad information.

Anyway, mostly love your show and tell my friends about it. I am a fan.

Best wishes,

[krkaufman]

1. Excellent email. Go get 'em. n/t

[wiggs]

2. kick because we all need to see it. n/t