SOURCE:
ZERO HEDGEURL:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-29/abc-wapo-effectively-admit-they-tampered-their-polls-hillary-lead-shrinks-2-points
Just yesterday we wrote about the very curious ABC / Wapo poll which seemed to show Hillary's blow-out 12-point lead from last Sunday get cut in half in a matter of just two days. But the ABC/Wapo enigma continues to grow today as their latest poll shows the
presidential race has now tightened to just 2 points, which is within the margin of error. Ironically, these new results do not reflect the
latest FBI bombshell as polling was concluded on October 27th and it still includes an 8-point sampling advantage for democrats.METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 24-27, 2016, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,148 likely voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 37-29-29 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents.
So what happened? For months we have argued that these goal-seeking reports (aka "Polls") can be easily manufactured to show whatever results are desired by simply "tweaking" the sample pool. WikiLeaks even exposed a handy guide 37-page poll-rigging guide on how to
"include ethnic 'oversamples' as required" to manufacture the desired poll numbers. But, with today's latest ABC / Washington Post poll, the real "smoking gun" admission is revealed as the pollsters admit that the narrowing of their polling results are "not mainly about people shifting in their candidate preference" but about how their sample pool was constructed.
"Changes in the poll’s latest four nights compared with the previous four are not mainly about people shifting in their candidate preference, but about changes in who’s intending to vote." So that's how you manufacture inane results like this:
Now, while ABC / Wapo claim that the 10-point swing (in less than a week) was driven by changes in "who's intending to vote," we find it quite curious that their own data shows just a 2-point swing in people who said they were "certain to vote" on 10/23, when the poll reflected a 12-point Hillary lead, and 10/27 when the lead had collapsed to just 2 points. So, are we really expected to believe that a 2-point swing in voter intentions somehow translated to a 10-point swing in the poll results?
Not likely...something tells us it had a little more to do with including "ethnic 'oversamples' as required."
So,
now that ABC / Wapo have effectively declared their own poll utterly useless, the question is what were their motivations for skewing their polling data? We have a couple of ideas:
Trump is simply experiencing a huge surge in momentum...seems odd to have this kind of surge on minimal news (remember the poll was taken prior to the recent FBI disclosures).
ABC / Wapo pollsters got a slap on the wrist from the Hillary campaign for getting a bit overzealous on their manufactured 12-point "lead" which could have resulted in lower voter turnout for Hillary.
ABC / Wapo reviewed early voting stats starting to come in around the country and realized that their polls were in no way reflective of reality and decided they'd rather not lose ALL credibility (though it may be a bit too late for that).
Anyway, those are a couple of our ideas...what say you?
