Aiming to refute “mainstream media” polls that show Hillary Clinton having a decisive lead over GOP nominee Donald Trump, Breitbart News conducted its own poll – only to have it yield similar results.
Breitbart’s editor-in-chief Alex Marlow claimed that the poll would provide an “accurate assessment” of the 2016 election.
In the poll released Sunday, Clinton was ahead in a 4-way match-up with 42% to Trump’s 37%. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson came in 3rd with 9% and the Green Party’s Jill Stein was last with just 3%.
“It’s an open secret that polls are often manipulated and spun to create momentum for a particular candidate or issue,” Marlow said. “Breitbart News Network’s first national poll marks the start of a major initiative to give our readers an accurate assessment on where the American people stand on the key topics and people of the day — without the mainstream media filter.”
Breitbart has been heavily pro-Trump in its (sometimes inaccurate) reporting.
From Talking Points Memo:
As NBC, Bloomberg, Quinnipiac University and Monmouth University have showed Clinton leading in both national and state surveys in recent days, Trump supporters have lobbed charges of “skewed” polls released by a media that favors Clinton. Yet Clinton’s lead in those polls, which ranged between six and twelve points, is not so far from the five-point advantage she held in Breitbart’s survey.
https://twitter.com/ccsuny/status/765205213720506368
According to TPM, Breitbart is planning to release more polls with Gravis Marketing, who’s received criticism in the past for its less-than-steller polling practices. In the 2014 midterm elections, Gravis was way off in predicting Senate races in Kentucky and Texas.
An “informed ballot” survey conducted by Gravis this spring got a Maryland congressional race wrong by 96 percentage points, resulting in widespread mockery for the polling group.
Featured image: U.S. Department of State (Flickr)
Leave a Reply