Poll Dancing

Two weeks ago, Fox News and every other conservative news outlet was doing a victory dance regarding a Rasmussen poll which showed approval for Trump skyrocketing to 35% among African Americans. There was zero hesitation in pronouncing that this foretold of doom for Democrats in 2020, and that liberals had to seriously re-think their strategies. CNN commentators immediately decried the poll as inaccurate. Anna Navarro Cardenas, a Republican commentator on CNN, notably said, "Zero chance this is accurate." Her comment was immediately decried by Fox, One America News, and other outlets as "typical liberal media bias." Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity could barely contain their excitement.

Rasmussen is often cited by right-wing news because it skews results in favor of Republican candidates. Thus, when other polls typically show an approval rating among African Americans for Donald Trump to be around 10%, Rasmussen shows it typically around 25%. So a report that shows approval among black Americans at 35% should have indicated a spike in approval rating in general. But was this accurate, or merely an outlier? Another poll by Emerson University seemed to show similar results, and Fox took this as gospel. Now, a "fair and balanced" news organization such as the one Fox News claims to be, would have reported these as a potential outliers, and advised that further results need to be obtained before any conclusions could be drawn. They might also have pointed out that, even if real, this could be only a temporary spike in approval among African Americans, spurred in large part by Trump's comments about the horrible state of the inner city. Naturally, they did not say either of these things, instead reporting that Trump was definitely gaining support among the black American voting population.

Well, surprise, surprise, reality has brought this biased reporting back down to a crash-landing on planet Earth. A YouGov poll released yesterday shows African Americans who strongly approve of Donald Trump to be merely 5%, and those that somewhat approve of Trump to be 8%, giving Trump a whopping 13%. Slightly higher than the usual 10%, but not by much. Rasmussen's poll crashed back down to its usual mid-25% range. And to top it off, a new poll, released by none other than Fox News itself, confirms this with 24%. Even Fox couldn't get the results higher than Rasmussen's 25% range.

To add insult to injury, the same poll shows increased support for Trump's impeachment, with 50% of respondents saying that Trump should be impeached and removed from office, and only 41% saying he should not be impeached at all.

So, will Fox News, One America, The Epoch Times, Newsday, Limbaugh or Hannity apologize for getting things so obviously wrong?

I'm betting not.


Eric

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