Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Do pollsters lie?

I know Democrats who supported Edwards to the bitter end.  Probably were fooled by his own staff.

"Under oath, Hickman admitted that in the final weeks of Edwards's 2008 bid, Hickman cherry-picked public polls to make the candidate seem viable, promoted surveys that Hickman considered unreliable, and sent e-mails to campaign aides, Edwards supporters and reporters which argued that the former senator was still in the hunt —even though Hickman had already told Edwards privately that he had no real chance of winning the Democratic nomination. . .

“Hickman acknowledged sending a series of emails in November and December, and even into January, endorsing or promoting polls that made Edwards look good. Asked about what appeared to be a New York Times/CBS poll released in mid-November showing an effective "three-way tie" in Iowa with Hillary Clinton at 25 percent, Edwards at 23 percent and Obama at 22 percent, Hickman acknowledged he circulated it but insisted he didn't think it was correct.

"The business I'm in is a business any fool can get into, and a lot can happen. I'm sure there was a poll like that," the folksy Hickman told jurors when first asked about a poll showing the race tied. "I kept up with every poll that was done, including our own, and there may have been a few that showed them a tie, but... that's not really what my analysis is. Campaigns are about trajectory, and... there could have been a point at which it was a tie in the sense that we were coming down, and Obama was going up, and Clinton was going up."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2012/10/a-pollster-under-oath-137100.html

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