Rex Murphy: It wasn’t just that the polls were wrong. It was how extravagantly wrong the near totality of them were, and all in the same direction. This I have written about before, but it is so delicious a news morsel, I like to return to it. The New York Times, the ponderous Vatican of American public affairs, had Clinton’s chances — as of half an hour before the results started rolling in — at 92 per cent, and sad-sack Trump barely breathing at eight per cent.
Would it be reasonable for Republicans to take comfort in how badly the polls performed last time? Should the things that went wrong last time be taken as evidence that they are wrong today? Absolutely not. It would be a mistake to take the errors of 2016 as a dry run for the errors of 2020.
However, what I would suggest is that some of the partisan impulses that distorted coverage and polling last time are at play again, and with greater intensity this time. Nowhere is this clearer and more damning than the protection being afforded by the mass media to the allegations of influence peddling currently swirling around Biden, which have been put into lockdown (a term we now know all too well) by so many professed professional journalists.
No comments:
Post a Comment