Ahead of President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, the networks offered previews of his speech during their Monday evening newscasts with ABC and NBC working particularly hard to paint a rosy picture for Obama with rising poll numbers and having “redefined” the “model of how to sell the State of the Union.”
Polling
ABC, NBC Cheer Obama’s Liberal Proposals in SOTU Previews; ‘Going to Play a Little Robin Hood’ With Tax Hikes
By Curtis Houck | January 19, 2015 | 9:58 PM EST 
By Curtis Houck | January 14, 2015 | 10:38 PM EST
At the conclusion of a story on Wednesday’s CBS Evening News on the drop in gas prices and how Americans feel about the economy, CBS News senior business correspondent Anthony Mason felt that it was important to inform viewers that President Obama’s approval rating has improved six points from October in the latest CBS News poll.
“All this has also helped lift President Obama's job approval rating. It's still below 50 percent, but at 46 percent, it's jumped seven points from October, just before the midterm elections,” Mason stated.
By Kyle Drennen | December 17, 2014 | 12:19 PM EST
Appearing on Wednesday's NBC Today, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd spun former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announcing that he was "exploring" the possibility of running for president in 2016 as a boost for the candidacy of Hillary Clinton: "By the way, the big Jeb Bush announcement helps Hillary because it'll scare Democrats and rally them around Hillary even more."
By Kyle Drennen | December 16, 2014 | 5:24 PM EST
On her 12 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Tuesday, host Andrea Mitchell could barely conceal her disgust while reporting on a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showing a majority of Americans supported the enhanced interrogation tactics used by the CIA after September 11th: "51% said that the procedures used, the interrogation enhanced tactics, which have been defined as torture, 51% said that they were acceptable under the circumstances. Only 28% said that they went too far."
By Kyle Drennen | December 15, 2014 | 12:22 PM EST
On Monday's CBS This Morning, co-host Gayle King claimed that Americans were "divided" over the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques after September 11th. However, the latest CBS News poll she cited "shows that 49% of Americans feel aggressive interrogation techniques like waterboarding are sometimes justified. 36% say they are never justified." The remaining 14% said that it "depends" or "didn't know."
By Tom Blumer | November 7, 2014 | 3:27 PM EST
The delusion is strong with this one.
On Friday's Morning Joe program on what remains of MSNBC, Al Sharpton, completely ignoring how late appearances in Maryland and Illinois by President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle coincided with significant deterioration in the situations of Democratic Party gubernatorial candidates in Maryland and Illinois, blamed Bill and Hillary Clinton, and not the Obamas, for Tuesday's Democratic debacle.
By Tom Blumer | November 6, 2014 | 5:50 PM EST
Wednesday afternoon, supposed polling genius Nate Silver tweeted that "Turnout was down from 2010 in almost every state."
Silver's readers and clients had better hope that Silver is usually better at counting — and analysis (HT Twitchy):
By Clay Waters | November 6, 2014 | 9:15 AM EST
The New York Times greeted the GOP takeover of the Senate with a mix of honest and sour reporting, emphasizing "angry" voters while downplaying the ideological significance of an "expensive" campaign "stumbling" to a close, while insisting that the Democrats succeeded in hanging on to their voting base and warning Republicans "about reading too much into their victories."
By Kyle Drennen | November 3, 2014 | 11:17 AM EST
While all three network morning shows on Monday covered the upcoming midterm election, only ABC's Good Morning America mentioned the real possibility of Republicans taking control of the Senate. Co-host George Stephanopoulos informed viewers: "And Republicans seem to be closing in on the six Senate seats they need to gain a majority....The forecaster Nate Silver, from FiveThirtyEight, puts their chances of getting the Senate at 74%."
By Tom Blumer | October 29, 2014 | 11:17 PM EDT
M.D. Kittle at Watchdog.org's Wisconsin Reporter scooped everyone covering the Badger State Governor's race on Tuesday when he reported that Democratic candidate Mary Burke's resumé is not what her campaign's web site says it is.
Burke's campaign bio claims that she "played a central role in Trek’s expansion as the Director of European Operations." Kittle found "multiple former Trek executives" who told him that, in Kittle's words, she "was fired by her own family following steep overseas financial losses and plummeting morale among Burke’s European sales staff." The real question to me is why it took until a week before Election Day to learn this.
By Tom Blumer | October 28, 2014 | 12:08 AM EDT
The most recent CNN/Opinion Research poll covering October 24-26 shows that 68 percent of those surveyed said that they are "very angry ... or somewhat angry ... about the way things are going in the country today," and that 60 percent are "very scared" or "somewhat scared." CNN's web coverage and the poll report presented on Jake Tapper's show today relayed that info.
But, predictably, the poll was seriously cooked. Its 31%-21%-48% breakdown of Democrats, Republicans and independents is a sick joke. Gallup's continuously running breakdown as of mid-October, by comparison, is 29%-33%-35%, a 14-point swing from the CNN poll. So CNN's video reassurance that voters have a one-point generic ballot preference for Democrats really translates to at least a +4 for Republicans in the real world.
By Tom Blumer | October 22, 2014 | 8:40 PM EDT
At their debate Tuesday night, former Florida governor (2007-2010), former Republican (1974-2010), former independent (2010-2012) and current Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist got out the crying towel over why the Sunshine State's economy was so bad on his watch. He also refused to acknowledge that incumbent Republican Governor Rick Scott deserves any credit for the state economy's overachievement during the past 45 months.
At the debate, Crist tried to explain away the economic disaster which occurred during his term in office by claiming that — quoting from the debate transcript — "I was serving during the global economic meltdown. And we did the very best we could to get Florida through it and we did." As seen after the jump, the "best we could do" for Crist was far, far worse than the rest of nation's "best" could do. As would be expected, I haven't found any establishment press coverage which has made the comparisons which follow.