Another Democrat Manufactured Poll Shows Heitkamp Beating Berg
According to the same Democrat pollster that showed Barack Obama winning North Dakota in 2008 (Obama ultimately lost the state by a little more than 8 points), Heidi Heitkamp is beating Rick Berg by four points:
Former state Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp (D) leads Rep. Rick Berg (R-N.D.) 49-44 in a survey commissioned by North Dakota Democrats. Surprisingly, just 7 percent were undecided six months out from Election Day.
The poll, by Democratic firm DFM Research, suggested Heitkamp is running significantly ahead of other Democrats, giving her solid standing despite being a Democrat in a state where President Obama is expected to lose.
Their 2008 poll was only off by 11 percentage points. If we apply that margin of error to this poll, Berg is winning by 6 points.
Which sounds about right to me.
Conveniently, this polling data was released in conjunction with a $75,000 ad buy by the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee, which pretty much tells us all we need to know about this poll.
It was calculated to shape public opinion, not measure it.
What’s amazing to me is how many media outlets swallow these polls from Democrat pollsters without even questioning their coordination with campaign advertising, and the fact that actual election outcomes show them to inaccurate more often than not.
Update: Here’s the polling memo provided by the Democrat polling firm. You’ll note, at the beginning, that the database they sampled from for the poll…was provided by the Democrat state party.
So according to a sample of all the people in the North Dakota Democrat voter database, Heidi Heitkamp is beating Rick Berg by a margin that’s barely outside the margin of error. If I were a Democrat, I wouldn’t be pleased by that outcome.
