Say Anything Blog

A reader emails a link to this Daily Kos poll suggesting that Obama and McCain are tied in North Dakota.  I really don’t think that any poll tied to The Daily Kos is going to be an honest assessment of public opinion, but I did have to chuckle at this blatantly skewed geographic polling sample.

Apparently the Kos poll mostly consisted of respondents from eastern North Dakota, with a few from northern and southern North Dakota added in, and not one respondent from western North Dakota.

North     134 interviews
East     204 interviews
South     162 interviews

Anyone familiar with North Dakota knows that the eastern part of the state, which contains the two most urban areas (Grand Forks and Fargo) as well as the state’s two big universities (UND and NDSU) is the most liberal part of North Dakota.  That the poll sample was skewed toward respondents from the east, with no respondents from the western part of the state (which lean much more conservative) casts a shadow over the results.

What’s really interesting is to compare this Daily Kos poll to an earlier poll run by the Fargo Forum.  The Forum poll skewed even further left toward Obama giving The One a two point, within-the-margin-of-error lead over McCain.  But if the Kos poll is skewed liberal, the Forum poll must have been skewed even more.

All of which plays into my theory about media polls in general: They’re more about influencing public opinion than measuring it.  The people who run these polls aren’t trying to inform the public.  They’re trying to manipulate the public to sell newspapers or support a particular issue/candidate.

Or both.