So much for the Democrats getting blown out in the Tennessee Senate race
Late last week, a new poll claimed that Democratic candidate Phil Bredesen had fallen fourteen points behind Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn in the U.S. Senate race in Tennessee. Several cable news pundits quoted the poll as if it were the only polling data available in the race, and held it up as evidence that Bredesen was getting blown out, and the Democrats were in trouble. But now a new poll is telling a very different story.
The latest poll from Reuters says that the Republican candidate, Blackburn, is up by just three points. So is the three point Reuters poll correct, or is the infamous 14 point NY Times poll correct? The answer is neither, because you never ever ever look at just one poll.
At the time the 14 point poll was released by the NY Times, it was an outlier. The CBS News poll in that race showed Blackburn up by eight points, the Fox poll showed Blackburn up by five points, and the CNN poll showed Bredesen up by five points. Polling averages are the only valid way to look at the polls, and in this instance, the average pegged Blackburn as being up by 5.5 points. When you factor in the new 3 point poll, it brings the average down to 5 points.
In other words, all indications are that, with three weeks to go, Marsha Blackburn is still leading this race. But as Palmer Report pointed out over the weekend, she was never ahead by fourteen points, because that’s not how you analyze polling data. The final polling averages in any given race usually prove to be correct within the margin of error. The polls aren’t the problem here. The problem is that the media reports individual poll numbers out of context, usually from one far end of the range or the other, in order to create drama – instead of doing the adult thing by simply reporting the polling averages.
