Here’s one Trib story about their most recent poll (summary here, crosstabs here), that barely mentions the most remarkable numbers from it.
The voters who identify with the Tea Party overwhelmingly favor Republicans in statewide races, with more than 80 percent of them in each race favoring the Republican over the Democrat. In the governor’s race, 84 percent of the Tea Partiers favor Perry, 5 percent are for Democrat Bill White, 8 percent go with Libertarian Kathie Glass and 2 percent back Deb Shafto of the Green Party.
And here’s another:
The Perry-White result includes the responses to a follow-up question posed to those who responded “don’t know” about their preference for governor. This was a different approach from the September UT/Tribune poll, conducted at a time when we thought many voters had yet to turn their attention to the election. About 15 percent of the October sample said they were undecided in their initial response. When pressed respondents to express a preference, equal numbers chose Perry and White, adding 5.4 percent to each candidate’s totals. Libertarian Kathie Glass gained an additional 2 percent from these “pushed” undecided respondents, and Deb Shafto, the Green candidate, gained another point. This left the undecided number at less than half a percentage point.
That second one was written by the pollsters themselves, but there’s still no discussion of the fact that the level of Libertarian Party support they are projecting in the Governor’s race and in all of the other races is both unprecedented and not seen in other concurrent polls. As I noted before, they are showing Libertarian support levels that would be double to triple the highest amount we’ve seen in contested races over the last eight elections, going back to 1994, and they have yet to offer a hypothesis as to why that might be. I find that puzzling and neglectful. If the PECOTA projections for the 2011 baseball season claimed that five guys would bat .400 and three pitchers would win 30 games, I’d expect to see some detailed explanations for why those predictions are justified. To do otherwise would make me question the fundamental structure of the system. I’m feeling the same way about this poll right now.
I understand that this is an internet poll. The company has a group of people that have volunteered to be polled. The company decides what demographics it wants for a poll and chooses accordingly. Libertarians were early adopters of the internet and are always overly represented in users. Remember how well Ron Paul did in internet polls.
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