The Second Annual StinkyJournalism.org's Top Ten 'Dubious Polling' Awards

Art Science Research Laboratory's StinkyJournalism.org announces the Second Annual Top Ten "Dubious Polling" Awards, presented by veteran pollsters, George Bishop of the University of Cincinnati, and David Moore of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

NEW YORK, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- These 2010 awards highlight the more risible and the somewhat less than sterling performances of publicly announced polls during the past year. This year's awards include:

• Fuzzy Math Award – to Fox News Network, for its creative presentation of polling numbers, showing what 120 percent of the public were thinking – not to count an additional 15 percent who weren't thinking! Who knew the public could be a third larger than itself?

• "Oops!" Award – to the Marist, Quinnipiac and Survey USA polling organizations for their relentless campaign portrayal of an easy re-election campaign for New York City's Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and their final predictions of a double-digit victory for the mayor, who actually won by just 4.4 percentage points. Whew! Shades of Dewey Beats Truman!

• The Emperor Has No Clothes Award – to the Gallup Poll, for its admission that its Six Decade Old "Most Admired" Lists of Living Men and Women do not include the "most admired" people in the world after all! (No, Glenn Beck is not more admired than the Pope, despite what Gallup's Most Admired List told us.) Say it ain't so, Ghost of George! Have you been lying to us all these years?!

Read the full report --The Top Ten "Dubious Polling" Awards and the 2010 recipients who have earned them. Go to: http://www.stinkyjournalism.org/latest-journalism-news-updates-169.php .  

George Bishop is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Graduate Certificate Program in Public Opinion & Survey Research at the University of Cincinnati. His most recent book, The Illusion of Public Opinion: Fact and Artifact in American Public Opinion Polls (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005)  was included in Choice Magazine's list of outstanding academic titles for 2005 (January 2006 issue).

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). Publishers' Weekly refers to it as a "succinct and damning critique...Keen and witty throughout."

Published by Art Science Research Laboratory, www.asrlab.org, a not-for-profit, co-founded by Rhonda Roland Shearer and her late husband, Harvard Professor Stephen Jay Gould, StinkyJournalism.org is ranked by Alexa as 15th-20th among most visited media watchdogs.  

SOURCE Art Science Research Laboratory