The wave of extremely biased Fox News polls is a sign that Republicans are losing battleground Senate races across the country.
The Fox polls have Mitch McConnell leading Alison Lundergan Grimes 45%-41% in Kentucky, Pat Roberts leading Independent Greg Orman 44%-39%, Dan Sullivan leading Sen. Mark Begich in Alaska 44%-40%, Tom Cotton leading Mark Pryor in Arkansas 45%-39%, and Cory Gardner leading Mark Udall in Colorado 43%-37%.
A deeper look at the polling itself reveals that Fox News made it easy to spot how they rigged the numbers for Republican candidates. The margin of error over is 3.5 points, but the margin of error for Democrats and Independents in each state ranges from 6-9 points. The margin of error for non-white and Latino voters was 8-9 points. If a poll underestimates non-white voters by eight to nine points, and lowers percentage of Democratic and Independent support by 6-9 points the result will be a series of polls that show Republicans way ahead.
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Harry Enten at FiveThrityEight wrote about the pro-Republican bias that is built into Fox News polls, “Fox News polls throughout this election cycle have had a fairly strong pro-Republican house effect, a measure of how a pollster’s results compare to other polls. For instance, Fox News’s generic ballot has shown Republicans up by seven percentage points among likely voters for two polls in a row, while the average pollster has shown Republicans up by 3 points. Looking at national and state data, Fox News currently has a +3.6 percentage-point pro-Republican house effect.”
A look at the methodology for the latest Fox News polls reveals that the bias in polls seemed to have been amped up from 4 points to six points or more. The bias is worse that four point average that FiveThirtyEight had been using. The Fox News polls are another sure sign that Republicans are losing. Fox put out these polls in an attempt to shift the media storyline away from the Democrats’ growing momentum.
The Fox News polls are absurdly biased. They don’t match up with any of the recent polling except for the other Republican leaning CNN/ORC and NBC News/Marist polls. Polling has become a partisan battlefield, and the impact of this change is that the numbers are less reliable than they used to be.
Fox News tried to save the Republican Party, but all they accomplished was revealing the extreme bias behind their polling.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
