Now that the election is over can we finally talk about how right leaning the entire media (except MSNBC) was.
Watching Fox you heard almost daily from brilliant minds like Dick Morris (lulz) that the polls were skewed purposely as a dastardly ploy to favor Obama and influence this election.
As it turns out, the polls (outside of Nate Silver and Prof. Wang) were horribly skewed in Romney’s favor.
Now I know this is another reality that the right will just refused to accept, but I see no way for them to explain their poor polling numbers other than extreme bias or blatant ignorance (both hallmarks of the right wing media).
Right wing viewpoints sell in the 24 hour media cycle, and much of the media sold out.
[quote=“Tempo Gain”][quote=“Deuce Dropper”]
As it turns out, the polls (outside of Nate Silver and Prof. Wang) were horribly skewed in Romney’s favor.
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Nate Silver was basically compiling polls, which suggests that the polls themselves were on average very accurate.[/quote]
Yes, but the national polls were presented in a manner consistently where Romney had a lead (sometimes upwards of 5 points) and they frequently cited a bump from the first debate even weeks after the debate when the alleged bump had long since disappeared.
The news media outlets benefit greatly from a close race and by presenting data in a manner where the incumbent appears to be in trouble and a tight race make for higher ratings.
The media leaned right this entire election season, they were willfully ignorant or incredibly stupid and I think either one of them is reason to hold their feet to the fire and out all those responsible for things being the way they were when the truth was so plain for others to see.
[quote=“Tempo Gain”][quote=“Deuce Dropper”]
As it turns out, the polls (outside of Nate Silver and Prof. Wang) were horribly skewed in Romney’s favor.
[/quote]
Nate Silver was basically compiling polls, which suggests that the polls themselves were on average very accurate.[/quote]
Except that he looks at how accurate the polls were historically, and incorporates factors to compensate for the biases. E.g. Rasmussen has been shown to overstate in favor of the Republicans in previous election cycles, so he adjusts for that.
Isn’t that the point then? If it’s true, then we would expect that if/when a Republican is seeking re-election but is actually ahead, they’d lean left to make it appear closer, and thus make more money. This actually doesn’t seem like much of a revelation to me.
As for Fox, yeah, whatever. (I’m not saying that in support of them, quite the opposite.)
The news media outlets benefit greatly from a close race and by presenting data in a manner where the incumbent appears to be in trouble and a tight race make for higher ratings.[/quote]
It was close though, in fact, in the national vote.
They did seem to overemphasize the national polling. The national vote is a strong predictor of electoral success, but isn’t the real story, particularly less so in a close race. Analysis like Silver’s, which suggested a stronger chance of an Obama win, got less attention. It’s not traditional really though is it? I suspect in the next election you’ll see it getting more attention.
[quote=“Chris”]
Except that he looks at how accurate the polls were historically, and incorporates factors to compensate for the biases. E.g. Rasmussen has been shown to overstate in favor of the Republicans in previous election cycles, so he adjusts for that.[/quote]
Indeed, though that seems to be an exception reading here (as I guess you did as well as they mention Rasmussen):
I think you’ll get more of the traction you want if you start a topic named What Moron Actually Depends On Television For Unbiased Political News?
American television has been an unreliable source of unbiased political information, more or less, since 1987 when Reagan’s FCC decided it would no longer enforce the Fairness Doctrine.
Here’s a relevant article on pollster bias by Drew Linzer at votamatic.org: Another Look at Survey Bias. If Florida falls for Obama, then this guy had the race called accurately before July.
Anyway, there have been some on Sam Wang’s site who have noticed that Rasmussen was trying to “get around” the bias by being “honest” in blue states so that they could skew in favor of Romney in swing states. But again that’s just conjecture.
[quote]But here’s a simple test. There have been hundreds of smaller organizations who have released fewer than a half-dozen polls each. Most have only released a single poll. We can’t reliably estimate the house effects for all of these firms individually. However, we can probably safely assume that in aggregate they aren’t all ideologically in sync – so that whatever biases they have will all cancel out when pooled together. We can then compare the overall error distribution of the smaller firms’ surveys to the error distributions of the larger firms’ surveys. (The survey error is simply the difference between the proportion supporting Obama in a poll, and my model’s estimate of the “true” proportion on that state and day.)
If the smaller firms’ errors are distributed around zero, then the left-leaning firms are probably actually left-leaning, and the right-leaning firms are probably actually right-leaning, and this means that they’ll safely cancel each other out in my results, too. On the other hand, if the smaller firms’ error distribution matches either the left-leaning or the right-leaning firms’ error distribution, then it’s more likely the case that those firms aren’t significantly biased after all, and it’s the other side’s polls that are missing the mark.
What do we find? This set of kernel density plots (smoothed histograms) shows the distribution of survey errors among the seven largest survey organizations, and in grey, the distribution of errors among the set of smaller firms. The smaller firms’ error distribution matches that of Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA, YouGov, and PPP. The right-leaning firms – Rasmussen, Gravis Marketing, and ARG – are clearly set apart on the pro-Romney side of the plot.[/quote]
[quote=“Deuce Dropper”]Now that the election is over can we finally talk about how right leaning the entire media (except MSNBC) was.
[/quote]
LOL right wing leaning media. Yes, Fox leans right but the rest of the networks were all but giving each other fist bumps last night. But yah blah blah blah Faux news. How original. Gotta admit I love your logic, though. Polls were slightly wrong is conclusive proof that the main stream media leans right.
I think of CNN as being more left than not. But only because the right have gone off the deep end on so many issues, you can’t report their issue of the day and keep a straight face.
CNN International is definitely a bit left, but CNN in the US is basically Fox Lite.
332-206
There is no way to sugar coat this, it is a landslide, just a bit smaller than how badly Obama beat McCain (good thing $4.2B was spent for status quo), ANYONE who called this thing ‘too close to call’ or ‘razor thin margins’ etc… is operating under extreme bias, and NO not everyone had it that way, those who took out ratings and rooting interests nail it almost exactly (Nate Silver).
Hopefully the next four years will allow the media to fall back towards the middle.
I always get a kick outta those that complain about the mainstream US media being so damn commie.
What a lark!
As DD has noted, CNN international is slightly left of centre, according to N.American standards, but watching CNN in North America is about as close to self-lobomitisation as one would care to get.
North American Mainstream media are basically a pawn, not much different than any other organ of state. The same vile themes, without substance, presented ad sickenitum. Make any with an ounce of soul puke!
