high noon

July brought us Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas's frank admission that the media's positive spin on Kerry/Edwards would be worth “maybe fifteen points”.

In September there were the Dan Rather “fake, but accurate” memos, the culmination of an investigation obsession that producer Mary Mapes has pursued for five years.

This month, another memo (real, this time) from ABC News honcho Mark Halperin to his underlings, instructing them in matters political to put their thumb on the scale—in John Kerry's favor, naturally.

So. What's next? Poll fixing?

Well, yes, or so it seems. Glad you asked:

I don't believe that public opinion has been changing as much as these polls seem to suggest. The variation we see up through July looks like what engineers call “sample aliasing” or “jitter”. Note that it falls well within the oft-claimed ±4 points of error. This is typical for data taken in noisy sampling environments; I've seen this kind of thing many times.

August and September are different. I've seen that kind of thing, too.

In my opinion, the polls were being deliberately gimmicked, in hopes of helping Kerry. In early August it looks as if there was an attempt to engineer a “post-convention bounce”, but it failed and was abandoned after about two weeks. But I'm not absolutely certain about that.

The data for September, however, is clearly an anomaly. The data is much too consistent. Compare the amount of jitter present before September to the data during that month. There's no period before that of comparable length where the data was so stable.

The September data is also drastically outside of previous trends, with distinct stairsteps both at the beginning and at the end. And the data before the anomaly and after it for both Kerry and Bush matches the long term trendlines.

If I saw something like that in scientific or engineering data, I'd be asking a lot of very tough questions. My first suspicion would be that the test equipment was broken, but in the case of opinion polls there is no such thing. My second suspicion would be fraud.

Despite being a fan of The X Files (well, until the last two seasons, which really sucked, even though I watched until the bitter end), I'm not much for conspiracy theories. And if the author of the analysis excerpted above was just about anyone other than Steven Den Beste, I would not have linked to it.

Is this a clear case of fraud? No—but the data is highly suggestive of a bandwagon effect, especially considering this, from one of Den Beste's readers.

Take a look of the sampling on the Newsweek polls starting in the middle of August and running through today. I think you'll find it interesting.

Of course, if you don't have time to dig into it, let me sum up: They oversampled Republicans through most of September, then switched back to slightly oversampling Dems, as they feel there are more Democrats than Republicans nationwide.

I figured the data needed a second look as soon as Bush opened that monster lead. There was just no way, no matter how much I'd like to think so.

Oh, and when did they switch back, you ask? Why, right after the first debate, my dear man! Need a point of inflection, after all, don't we?

If—and I do stress if—this is another example of legacy media smoke-and-mirror tactics, it would not be the first time in recent memory that polls were massaged. The LA Times appears to have done just that last fall, in the weeks immediately prior to the California recall election. And given that last month's polling spike appears coincidentally timed to give an impression of Kerry momentum going into the final weeks—Well. You can draw your own conclusions.

Here's a sampling of Wretchard's:

The most striking thing about the Kerry trend line is that it suggests a system that has been maxed out, like an engine which has reached the limit of its design. That suggests a far larger problem for Liberals then the mere weakness of a Kerry candidacy. To a substantial extent, Kerry is a proxy for an abstract candidate called 'Anybody But Bush'. The failure to get maximum acceleration when the Left needs it most could indicate that its traditional political instruments are losing traction. Celebrity endorsements, mainstream media support, favorable reviews from academia plus street events rooted in the old antiwar-civil rights movement — the old winning combinations — no longer have an overwhelming effect. That doesn't mean they have no effect. We will know whether Steven den Beste's long term trend lines are correct in a little over two weeks.

It's white knuckles time.

Guess I should have left the line about Big Media suicide-bombing journalistic ethics lol

Can u please explain this & get back to me? thanks