On Sunday prior to the CNN hosted debate between Ron DeSantis and Andrew Gillum, CNN produced polling, conducted by the firm SSRS, that looked absurd on the surface and was denounced by the DeSantis campaign immediately. Here’s a quote from the DeSantis campaign Sunday afternoon, “This poll is as amusing as it is suspicious in that it was released hours before a debate between the two candidates, clearly meant to give the advantage to Andrew Gillum,” said Stephen Lawson on behalf of the DeSantis for Governor campaign. “But while CNN is clearly working hard to craft far left polling data with results that are pure fiction, Ron DeSantis is ready to face Mr. Gillum on behalf of all Floridians who stand against his billion-dollar tax increase, anti-law enforcement agenda, and record of suspicion and corruption.”
However, there are long lines of candidates and campaigns that would denounce polls simply because they weren’t favorable. Was the methodology off-base or should Ron DeSantis be preparing his concession speech with a 12-point deficit in hand?
Just last week I updated Florida’s voter registration total and here’s the breakdown:
- Democrats: 4,875,282 (37%)
- Republicans: 4,626,815 (35%)
- Independents/Other: 3,591,784 (27%)
Here’s how CNN/SSRS polled:
- Democrats: 32%
- Republicans: 29%
- Independents/Other: 39%
Democrats were undersampled by 5%, Republicans were undersampled by 6% and independents/3rd party folks were oversampled by 12%. Amazingly they say the margin of error is 3.6%. If the state was compromised of voters the way they polled then perhaps. Instead, they turned Florida’s smallest voting block into the largest and badly undersampled the two prominent constituencies with Republicans receiving the shortest end of the partisan stick.
In the world of CNN and SSRS, you can miss sampling by a total of 23% yet suggest there’s only a 3.6% margin of error. Maybe this is an insight into how they keep a straight face depicting more than 90% of their coverage of the Trump administration negatively.
Applying maximum margin of error to the polling, Gillum will win by a minimum of 8.4%. I bet you that Gillum’s camp doesn’t even believe that’s true. If Gillum wins by 8.4% or more, I’ll issue an apology to CNN for seeing what no one else did. If he doesn’t, it’s another classic case of fake news, fake polling CNN.
Photo by: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images