Topic: NewsBusters
A Sept. 30 NewsBusters post by Lachlan Markay highlights a Weekly Standard item claiming that a Time/CNN poll on the California Senate race showing Democrat Barbara Boxer with a large lead over Republican Carly Fiorina oversampled Democrats. The Weekly Standard recalculated the numbers through "turnout numbers from the past three election cycles" to reach that conclusion. The Standard concluded: "The only way to get a nine-point Democratic lead is to sample a more Democratic electorate than even 2008."
Neither Markay nor the Standard seem to have contemplated the possibility that the percentage of Democrats in California has been increasing. As the Public Policy Institute of California notes, the percentage of Democrats in the California electorate has increase by three points since 2006, and the percentage of Republicans has decreased by 3.5 points.
The MRC has long quibbled over purported poll bias through oversampling of Democrats, even when the electorate being sample includes more Democrats.
