It’s late October heading into a big statewide election and like clockwork the Los Angeles Times/USC poll is predicting huge blowout victories for California Democrats. Given their history, I can safely say these results can be taken to the bank. It just so happens that bank is the sperm bank, because this poll is nothing more than Democratic Party masturbation.
According to the Times, Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown is crushing Republican Meg Whitman 52% to 39% among likely voters. Similarly, they have Democratic incumbent U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer pounding GOP nominee Carly Fiorina 50% to 42%.
These numbers should strike fear in the hearts of Republicans – and they do – provided they’re Republicans who don’t get the papers, live in a world where yesterday doesn’t exist and are suffering from an early onset of dementia.
Unfortunately for the Times, there’s only one Meghan McCain.
The rest of us are doing exactly what we should be doing: Ignoring this partisan trash falsely presented as worthwhile science.
Before I explain why this poll is wrong – it must be said that every poll involving the LA Times is wrong. Not just wrong, but SPECTACULARLY wrong. Dick Morris wrong.
Let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane.
On September 12, 2003 – with less than a month to go before California’s recall election — the Times published a piece titled “Recall a Tossup as Successor Race Tightens.” In the article, the Times had the following nuggets of information:
Likely voters in the Oct. 7 election support the ouster of Davis by 50% to 47%, with just 3% undecided, the poll found. The result, a statistical tossup, is virtually unchanged from an August Times poll.
More volatile than the referendum on Davis is the contest for a replacement. Bustamante, the only well-known Democrat in the race, leads with 30%, followed by two Republicans: Schwarzenegger with 25% and state Sen. Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks with 18%.
Not even the OJ jury could screw up the verdict on this one: The Times blew it, big time. The actual results for the recall election included Davis being run out of town by a 55% to 45% margin, and Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger routing Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante 49% to 31%.
To quote Bob Uecker in the movie Major League: “Just a bit outside.”
Fast forward to 2010.
Instead of fixing the serious methodological problems in their poll, the Times opted to double-down on junk science and skew the results to Democrats even more.
On September 26, 2010 the Times reported (surprise, surprise!) more good news for the Democrats:
Brown, the former governor and current attorney general, held a 49%-44% advantage among likely voters over Whitman, the billionaire former chief executive at EBay.
Boxer, a three-term incumbent, led Fiorina, the former head of Hewlett-Packard, by 51%-43% among likely voters in the survey, a joint effort by The Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Tony Quinn, a political historian and co-publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book analyzed the poll and found you’re more likely to get usable information from a Sylvia Brown appearance on “The Montel Williams Show” than you are from the Times.
Here is Tony Quinn in Fox and Hounds:
The turnout model used by the L.A. Times/USC poll suggests an even bigger Democratic landside in 2010 (than in 2008). While the party registration of likely voters is 44 percent Democratic and 36 percent Republican (about right), the likely voter self identification is 43 percent Democratic, 28 percent Republican and 28 percent independent. That is a heavier Democratic bias than 2008 – does anyone expect the Democratic turnout in 2010 to EXCEED 2008? Hardly likely, given the mood of the electorate.
And that’s not all:
This poll also shows that Latinos make up 19 percent of the electorate and 15 percent of likely voters. But in 2006, the last off year election, Latinos accounted for only 12 percent of voters, according to the Los Angeles Times own exit poll that year, so to project a 15 percent share in this off year’s election seems quite high.
And now here we are, a week before the November election, with another poll from the Times repeating all of the same mistakes. In explaining their methodology, the Times gives away the fact that they oversampled Latino Democrats, yet again:
An oversample of 400 Latino registered voters were interviewed by telephone. All interviews from the Latino sample were carried out by bilingual Latino interviewers, and conducted in the preferred language of the survey respondent, English or Spanish. Overall, 41 percent of interviews with the Latino sample were conducted in Spanish and 59 percent in English.
You have to give the Times an ‘E’ for effort to keep pushing this car off a cliff to see what will happen. But back on earth, it would literally be more scientific to take the margin of the latest LA Clippers defeat, assign the spread to the Republican candidate and publish those results than it would be to conduct a poll with this laughable methodology.
Consider this, in the three most recent polls for California’s U.S. Senate race :Rasmussen Reports shows Boxer 48-Fiorina 46 (D+2), Survey U.S.A reports Boxer 46-Fiorina 44 (D+2) and Wilson Research has Boxer 43-Fiorina 46 (R+3). The LA Times has Fiorina losing by 8.
In the three most recent polls for California’s Gubernatorial race: Rasmussen Reports shows Brown 48-Whitman 42 (D+6), Survey U.S.A reports Brown 47-Whitman 40 (D+7) and Wilson Research has Brown 44-Whitman 45 (R+1). The LA Times has Whitman being trounced by 13.
The Times poll is not just what political scientists would call an “outlier” it’s an out-right-liar.
Let’s just be honest: The LA Times is not doing a serious poll, they’re looking for an excuse to trash Republicans on the front page of their newspaper, while pretending it’s not advocacy journalism. A quick look through the endorsements from their editorial page shows you exactly where they are coming from. With the exception of Republican Steve Cooley for Attorney General, the Times has endorsed every single Democrat on the ballot. The only difference between the LA Times and California Democratic Party websites is that the Times will also tell you if the Lakers won.
And then there’s my favorite part of the story: The Times‘ never-ending ability to find Republicans who express childlike excitement at the thought of going out to vote for the Democratic ticket. This time it was registered Republican Paula Bennet of Acampo, who told the Times that Christmas morning comes in November for her:
“That message that they’re sending to people is a very bad choice,” she said. “We’re looking to people to act their values rather than throw money at causes. People are holding their money really closely and those candidates are really splurging.”
I flat out don’t believe that every national trend we are seeing from every distinguished polling firm is wrong, and the LA Times is right. Sorry LA Times, but we’re finally catching on to the boy who cried donkey.
And for the record, it’s easier to find a heterosexual male at a Liza Minnelli concert than it is to find a California Republican who doesn’t think Barbara Boxer is the anti-Christ. I know this to be true: I saw it in an LA Times poll.
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