Patterico's Pontifications

5/23/2008

It’s Only Slightly Less Tasteless If You Click the Link

Filed under: 2008 Election — Patterico @ 7:16 pm



Why do I keep blogging when I get only a few thousand lousy visits a day? You never know: somebody could kill Glenn Reynolds.

L.A. Times: Obama Would Win California by a Teeny, Tiny, Inconsequential Margin

Filed under: 2008 Election,Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 4:54 pm



The L.A. Times reports that, according to a new poll, Californians slimly reject the idea of John McCain as their presidential candidate. By a small margin, it appears, Californians would vote for Barack Obama — but only by a bit! The poll reveals such a narrow margin of victory, it appears that Obama can’t even muster a bare majority against McCain!

Obama would beat McCain by only 7 points. This is far less than half the 19-point gap by which Californians would approve an amendment banning gay marriage — a finding that caused the paper to repeatedly trumpet how narrowly and slimly (we Californians are slim!) the anti-gay marriage argument is winning with voters.

And indeed, the margin of an Obama victory, as measured by this poll, is slimmer than the margin of victory enjoyed by any Democrat candidate since 1988. Including John Kerry and Al Gore. [UPDATE: And the margin is actually within the poll’s margin of error.]

Isn’t that the news?

But despite this fact, I lied when I said the L.A. Times describes this as a narrow margin. The headline on the story, predictably, is Obama would take California in November, Times/KTLA poll finds. The main spin is that Hillary would win by a smaller margin, showing that she really isn’t the best candidate.

The fact that even Obama wins by only 7 points does not lead to a description of the margin as “narrow,” or “slim,” or “teensy-tiny, really so small as to be unnoticeable.”

But then, the paper’s editors and headline writers want Obama to be popular. Just like they want gay marriage to be popular. So a 7-point margin of victory for Obama is not narrow — but a 19-point margin of loss for gay marriage is as narrow as narrow can be.

Can they really not see how silly they look?

L.A. Times: Gay Marriage Opposed by a Very Narrow 19-Point Margin

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 12:01 am



An L.A. Times story is titled Californians narrowly reject gay marriage, poll finds. A headline on the paper’s main web site speaks of the “small margin” by which the public rejects gay marriage:

small-margin.JPG

The story begins:

By bare majorities, Californians reject the state Supreme Court’s decision to allow same-sex marriages and back a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at the November ballot that would outlaw such unions, a Los Angeles Times/KTLA Poll has found.

It’s the lead story on the front page, and here’s the headline in the print edition:

slimly-reject.JPG

Wow. With language like “slimly reject,” “narrowly reject,” “small margin,” and “bare majorities,” this sounds like a real photo finish. Let’s look at the body of the story, to see how narrowly the anti-gay marriage forces are barely squeaking past the opposition.

It turns out that the proposed amendment to ban gay marriage is “was leading 54% to 35% among registered voters.

Jeez. Only a 19-point difference! That’s certainly a “small margin”! You can’t reject gay marriage more “narrowly” than that!

I think they mean that Californians, who are slim, are rejecting gay marriage by a large margin. Hence, slimly rejecting!

(The paper also explains that the recent California Supreme Court decision is disapproved of by Californians by a 52% to 41% margin. But that 11-point difference illustrates only what people think of a decision that purports to say what the law is. It is not a reflection of what people think the law should be. For the answer to that question, you have to look to the numbers for and against the amendment — which is, again, winning by a much wider 19-point margin.)

The narrowness of a margin is really in the eye of the beholder. When the liberal position is behind, large gaps suddenly become small. Remember how this paper claimed that Arizona was “in play” for John Kerry — because George Bush was leading Kerry by “only” 16 points, 54% to 38%. By contrast, when another poll showed Kerry up by 15 in California, the headline was In California, Voters Stay in Kerry’s Corner. And more recently, Obama’s win in Oregon — a margin of 16 points when the story was written — was described as “Obama’s big win in Oregon.”

On the gay marriage issue, the article tries to downplay the piddly little 19-point margin by arguing that backers of ballot measures typically like to see initial support well above 50%, because ballot measures tend to lose support as elections draw near. That’s fine as far as it goes — but it doesn’t justify the paper’s being dishonest about the gap. 19 points is not a “small margin” by any stretch of the imagination — no matter how badly the paper wants it to be.

Thanks to Harold H.

UPDATE: The post has been updated to reflect the headline in the print edition. And here’s how it’s currently being sold on the paper’s main web page:

reject-by-a-bit.JPG

Just a bit! A tiny, 19-point sliver of a margin.

UPDATE x2: And the headline-tinkering continues:

narrowly-reject.JPG

UPDATE x3: Guess how the paper is spinning a 7-point margin of victory for Obama over McCain in a poll of California voters? Yeah, you guessed right.

UPDATE x4: And here is how the paper should have reported the story.

UPDATE x5: A commenter notes further examples of the L.A. Times spinning smaller margins as large when they favored Obama. 17% is a “double-digit” victory, and 15% means he “handily won.”

We can do this all day, L.A. Times editors. All day.


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0704 secs.