Some News Outlets Relied On The Wrong Poll

  • Thursday, November 8, 2018

Both Channel 3 and the Times Free Press loudly proclaimed the Bredesen/Blackburn race to be a dead heat according to polls. So what poll were they using, well the one from good old ETSU. Now ETSU is a fine institution but since they had the race even and Blackburn won by almost 11 points I have to wonder if this poll was conducted by a freshman Political Science class? 

There were three polls conducted after the ETSU poll and all had Blackburn ahead by a fairly good amount outside of the margin of error. The closest to election day by Emerson had Blackburn up by 8. Next was Fox who had her up by 9 and finally CNN had her ahead by 4. If you take the average of there three polls closest to election Blackburn was up by 7, once again outside the MOE. 

Next was the ETSU poll showing even. But here's the funny part, right before the ETSU poll NBC/Marist (of which WRCB is an affiliate) had Blackburn up by 5. So to make it look like an even race, Channel 3 had to completely ignore the last three polls and their own networks poll to use one by a university with virtually no track record at all compared to the national polling organizations.

These polls are not confidential one need only go to the Real Clear Politics website, where I got the numbers, to check polling before an election.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not to their own facts." 

Douglas Jones
Ooltewah

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