Under the Dome Bias

Today's Under the Dome headline screams "New SurveyUSA poll shows McCrory in the lead."

New? That poll's a week old, and two North Carolina-based polls released since continue to show Bev Perdue with the advantage. But you didn't see PPP's latest Governor poll in the print edition of the N&O. Civitas' was, but not with the gaudy headline.

Not to mention that there are times when the N&O might give some context when discussing the results of a poll. For instance, a brief discussion of this might have given readers a better base of information when contemplating those results.

This comes barely a week after the headline 'Democratic poll is good news for McCrory' about the Democracy Corps poll. They saw fit to publish the Governor results from that poll, but not the Senate results that showed Kay Hagan with a five point lead over Elizabeth Dole.

I don't think the N&O is actually biased in its reporting of polling results, but sloppy. Hopefully this recent trend will not continue.