… Internal polling is “being reported more often because it’s really easy journalism,” said Thomas Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “In this environment when people are trying to crank out a lot of stuff, sometimes they do it. It’s almost always unfortunate.” …
Reporters can be misled by internal data in myriad ways. Campaigns sometimes have access to multiple polls and “leak” the most favorable version. Questions can be asked in a certain order or with a certain tone that inflates a candidate’s numbers. Sometimes the “ballot test,” or horse-race question, is asked several times to gauge the effectiveness of certain political messages, but the figure provided to reporters may be the most favorable outcome. CONT.
Steve Friess, Columbia Journalism Review