Politico on polling driven journalism

Alex Burns @ 4:30 am

Forget the careful craft of survey research; as the midterm election hurtles toward the finish, campaigns are wielding polls less like scientific instruments than like heavy weaponry, using them to hijack news cycles and push their favored narratives about the campaign.

Alex Burns @ 5:53 am

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has widened his advantage over Republican wrestling executive Linda McMahon to 15 points, the Democrat’s internal tracking poll shows. The Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner has Blumenthal holding steady with a majority of the vote and leading McMahon, 53 percent to 38 percent. The pollster notes in a memo that McMahon’s public image remains deeply problematic, and “large numbers of Connecticut voters hold unfavorable views of McMahon.” Her favorability rating in the survey was 32 percent, while 47 percent said they had an unfavorable impression of her. The poll tested 600 likely voters on Oct. 3 and 4. Read the polling memo here.