You know, when the media tries to set a narrative it’s comically stubborn in trying to back it up with evidence, even when the ‘evidence’ is a little shaky.
Take this report I saw today on Yahoo News.
The headline? “Obama Shows Alarming Loss of Ground with Independents, Poll Indicates.”
Okay, that didn’t sound good.
“A new Reuters/Ipsos Poll shows President Barack Obama’s job approval rating among independents (37%) dropped sharply when compared to last month’s rating. According to the poll, the president’s approval rating fell a precipitous 10 percent. Could it spell trouble for his re-election?”
Uh oh.
But wait. Buried right at the bottom of the article were the findings of two other polls, by Gallup and Rasmussen, which put the President’s approval rating among independents at, respectively, 43% and 47%. Yes, 47% – a whole 10% higher than the Reuters/Ipsos poll. That’s just 4% lower than he got in the 2008 election.
“The numbers might be more worrisome for the president … if other polls corroborated the fall in approval ratings … Gallup, which daily tracks the president’s approval rating, showed Obama at 43 percent approval among independents during the same time frame, down only 2 percent from a month ago (and still up by a point over January).”
But it was the Reuters/Ipsos Poll that Yahoo chose to highlight, and feature in their headline.
I dunno, if you had three polls showing wildly different findings, wouldn’t you focus on the middle one?
Or mention that two of the three polls were rather positive for the President?
Then again, “Independent support for Obama down only 2 percent from a month ago (and still up by a point over January)” doesn’t quite fit that narrative, eh?
The Obama Diary 