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It was CBS News' turn, with its partner The New York Times, to publish a meaningless national opinion poll. At this late stage of the General Election contest, media organizations that feel like tracking the horse race should provide Electoral College projections not popular vote estimates.
Anyway, CBS told us that Barack Obama has 53% support among likely voters as opposed to John McCain's 39%. Dean Reynolds noted "a major shift among independent voters" and pointed to three key factors: McCain's overly negative campaigning; disapproval of the selection of Sarah Palin as GOP running mate; and Obama's performance in the debates. On ABC, John Berman took A Closer Look at the so-called Bradley Effect, named after the African-American Gubernatorial candidate in California in 1982, whose opinion poll lead did not manifest itself as an election night victory. The theory states that enough respondents lie about their antipathy towards black candidates that polls overstate their popularity. Berman turned to Gary Langer, ABC's in-house polling director, who pointed the finger at his own profession's errors rather than the racist mendacity of voters: "When a pre-election poll goes bad usually the reason is that it made a bad estimate of who was going to show up to vote--not that its respondents lied."
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