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Stephen Colbert Gives Flawed NYT's Poll The Treatment It Deserves

Late night host Stephen Colbert shredded The NYT for their godawful poll that most of our corporate media immediately latched onto, which showed Trump supposedly leading Biden by 5 percent among registered voters.

Late night host Stephen Colbert shredded The NYT for their godawful poll that most of our corporate media immediately latched onto, which showed Trump supposedly leading Biden by 5 percent among registered voters.

As Lucian Truscott at Salon noted, There is something wrong at the New York Times:

From presidential polls to refusing to report on Trump’s stumbles, things aren’t adding up at the Gray Lady

Two things — check that, three things — appear to have gone off the rails at the paper we used to call the Gray Lady. First, whoever is in charge of the paper’s polls is not doing their job. Second, whoever is choosing what to emphasize in Times coverage of the campaign for the presidency is showing bias. Third, the Times is obsessed with Joe Biden’s age at the same time they’re leaving evidence of Donald Trump’s mental and verbal stumbles completely out of the news. [...]

The Times on Sunday, however, had this headline ready for your morning coffee: “Majority of Biden’s 2020 Voters Now Say He’s Too Old to be Effective.” It’s another grab from the New York Times/Siena College poll they published on Saturday that is so outrageously flawed, a cottage industry has sprung up to pick apart its methodology and point out its glaring contradictions and straight-up bias.

Here's more from Colbert from this Wednesday's show:

COLBERT: Now that the race is set, the country is looking ahead to November and there are some disturbing numbers out there. For instance, this weekend, The New York Times published a poll that showed Trump leading Biden by 5 percent among registered voters.

Okay, now I’m less worried about the candidates and more worried about the mental competence of the voters. Somebody should give us a cognitive test. But don’t panic, because the methodology is so off, it led one member of the punditocracy to observe: “There is something wrong at the New York Times.”

Yeah, there is something wrong at the New York Times and it’s called connections. So, “Turncoat” and “Windsock” are words ending in clothing, but “Lawsuit” isn’t? My streak should be at 25 and you will be hearing from my lawyers, you bastards!

But another thing. But another thing. That New York Times poll is a mess. It found Trump winning the female vote by 1 percent, when Biden carried women in 2020 by 11 points. Somehow I doubt Trump has won back over 12 percent of women with his empowering message, “I’m a rapist.”

This poll is so off that it says 12 percent of Democrats support Dean Phillips, leading Dean Phillips to actually tweet: “When a NYT/Siena poll shows me at 12 percent, you better believe it’s flawed. Only 5 percent even know who I am.” That… That is so sad. He thinks 5 percent of people know who he is.

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