Media Polls

PPP and Civitas don't agree much, so when we do agree on something you can pretty much bet it's true. And one thing we agree on is that the results of today's WRAL/Rasmussen poll sound pretty fishy.

We can't know for sure though, because Rasmussen didn't tell us the party balance of the folks they polled. Or the gender balance. Or the racial balance. Or the age balance. Or pretty much anything that would let us make a basic analysis of the validity of their poll.

You get all those things in any PPP poll, which raises an interesting question. Isn't the media supposed to be a beacon of transparency, certainly more transparent than our 'partisan' polling company?

WRAL isn't the only tv station in the Triangle commissioning a poll. WTVD has been getting a monthly poll too. They get it from Survey USA and it comes complete with all the useful information you would want to analyze a poll.

In my opinion WTVD has it right and WRAL has it wrong. WRAL should either make Rasmussen release the demographic info on its poll so we can see what factors might be leading to this seemingly too friendly to Democrats poll, or else they should contract with someone else to do their poll who will release that information.

It's perfectly logical for media outlets to commission polls- but if they're going to, they should make an extra effort to make sure they're getting a good poll and abiding by the same transparency that they expect out of the decision makers they cover.