Romney's Pollster Wins First Place in iMediaEthics Fifth Annual Top Ten "Dubious Polling" Awards, 2013

NEW YORK, Jan. 29, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Topping iMediaEthics' 2013 fifth annual Dubious Polling Awards is Neil Newhouse and his associates at Public Opinion Strategies, who've won the "Wishing Won't Make It So" Award.

The annual Dubious Polling Awards ranks some of the most questionable and problematic polling efforts of 2012.

Newhouse and Public Opinion Strategies earned this coveted award because of their pre-election polling for Mitt Romney that suggested the former Massachusetts governor was poised to win the presidential election and that most media polls were simply overestimating the turnout among registered Democrats and young people. Newhouse's polling showed significant or commanding leads for Romney in Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire, all of which were won by Obama.

Second place went to the Associated Press, which won the "Be Sure to Read the Fine Print" Award, for its article claiming that a majority of Americans harbor prejudice against blacks. It turns out, according to the fine print in the methodology statement, that the poll may really have shown only that a majority of Americans are conservative, not racist.

Other winners include CNN's Anderson Cooper, "It's Not Really Lying" Award, for an interview in which the TV host gave misleading information to his guest in a "gotcha" interview; and ABC News and the Washington Post, "Vital Information for the Public to Know" Award, for their analysis of which presidential candidate the public felt would be the better babysitter.

The Top Ten "Dubious Polling" Awards are given each year by iMediaEthics polling director, David W. Moore, a veteran pollster and author, and former Managing Editor of the Gallup Poll. Check out the full report on iMediaEthics.org.  And, take a look at previous award winners from the past five years of dubious polls.

iMediaEthics is published by Art Science Research Laboratory, a not-for-profit co-founded by its director, Rhonda Roland Shearer, an adjunct lecturer at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Iowa, and her late husband, Harvard professor and scientist, Stephen Jay Gould. iMediaEthics, formerly known as StinkyJournalism.org, has a non-partisan journalism ethics program in which students and young journalists work with professional researchers to promote the media's use of scientific methods and experts before publication.

David W. Moore is a Senior Fellow with the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. He is a former Vice President of the Gallup Organization and was a senior editor with the Gallup Poll for thirteen years. He is author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls (Beacon, 2008; trade paperback edition, 2009).

SOURCE iMediaEthics

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