Monday, April 04, 2005

DeLay Houston Chron

(this post has been reworked here)

This article in the Houston Chronicle currently says: "Yet 45 percent said they would vote for someone other than DeLay if a congressional election in the 22nd District were at hand; 38 percent said they would stick with him."

The funny thing is that it *used* to say: "Yet 49 percent said they would vote for someone other than DeLay if a congressional election in the 22nd District were at hand; 38 percent said they would stick with him."

Note the difference between the 49% and the 45%! The news.google screenshot above (click for larger size) proves that they changed it! Nice. Thats just business as usual in Texas, i guess. not that theres anything wrong with that.

I'm trying to track down zogby's actual results... stay tuned.


update: heres an easier-to-read version of the screengrab


update2: the AP is running a story which uses the 45% number

update3: there are a bunch of other articles running with the 49% figure. heres news.google

i sent an email to zogby trying to clarify things

(ftr - this is original 'reporting' - i first discussed it over at pandagon. i heart amanda)

update4: heres the email i got back from zogby. astonishing.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Zogby International"
To: luke ryland
Subject: Dear John Website Message
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 15:48:43 -0400

> 49% John Zogby

update5: ftr, the poll is specifically a Houston Chronicle poll, performed by Zogby. It was their poll. they simply, flat out, unabashedly changed the result of their own poll - which then got cranked out through the system via AP etc. so now we have people like Aravosis merely saying "support for DeLay is slipping" rather than, say, "TANKING". can we ever believe either the media or any polls again? its so blatant, and so shameless.

update6: ftr, here is a screen shot of the email from zogby. unfortunately it doesnt include the question i asked them (i submitted it through a form on zogby.com), but i just mentioned that i'd seen both the 45% and the 49% figures quoted and asked which was correct. Ron from Why Are We Back In Iraq? has been helping me out with this and suggested that i show a screengrab of the email. thnx ron.


update7: im trying to get a sense of which story is getting most widespread - the AP now has duelling stories. on Sunday the AP said "Forty-five percent of 501 voters questioned last week said they would vote for someone else" *and* "49 percent said they would vote for someone other than DeLay". on Monday the AP was running with (at least) the 49% number.
ftr news.googling ("45 percent" "tom delay") gets 38 returns. meanwhile, ("49 percent" "tom delay") gets 20 returns - as imprecise (and irrelevant as all that is. its not as though 'fair&balanced' is defined as getting half the stories correct, and half of them wrong.

update8: and just to be really funny, the Chron runs another story Monday titled: "DeLay spokesman rebuffs critical poll" hahahahaha. the article goes on to use the 45% again. remember - it the Chron's *own* poll. hahahaha

update9: im gonna copy this post to the top of the blog here, and freeze this post as is. please refer to http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2005/04/delay-houston-chron-top.html and ill try to tidy the new post up a bit.

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