Jim Geraghty sniffed something wafting from a Washington Post poll that had John McCain down nationally by 6 to Hillary Clinton and 12 to Barack Obama. He took a look at the crosstabs, and found that 15% weren’t even registered to vote.
Ed Morrissey dug a bit deeper and found a serious flaw in the identification. Self-idenitying party idenfitication in the WaPo poll was 40% Democratic, 28% Republican, 28% independent, which isn’t exactly what Rasmussen recently found (38.7% D/33.1% R/28.2% I). Worse, when WaPo pushed the independents and folded it into the results, it turned into 55% Dem, 36% Pubbie.
The takeaway paragraph from Ed is worth archiving:
The result is an unreliable poll, but one hell of a headline. McCain trails by twelve! And when McCain beats Obama or Clinton, we’ll hear once again that the election had to have been stolen "” because all of the polls showed McCain behind.
Just how inaccurate? Rasmussen’s tracking poll has had McCain up on Clinton since the start of the track on February 7, and McCain up on Obama since February 23.
Of course, we don’t do a national election, but 51 individual state-by-state-by-federal-district contests. I believe you know how much salt should be taken with any national poll; the question is whether you have enough left after The Winter That Won’t Die™.
