Kossacks Drinking Koolaid

The title isn't anything new, of course, just that when Dear Leader Kos himself speaks, they don't even bother to follow a link and check it out. Case du jour: Ohio polling. Kos busily hypes up a new SurveyUSA Ohio poll showing Obama with a 9 pt advantage over McCain and pointing to the trend lines from a previous poll (McCain +2 at 47-45) as evidence that Obama is uniting the party; he also points out that this is a poll of likely voters.

Now that struck me as odd - I haven't been poll-watching too closely of late, but I didn't think SUSA (an automated phone polling company) surveyed LVs, only registered voters. A quick visit to RealClearPolitics' Ohio polling page showed me to be correct. It also showed that Kos omitted any mention of a few other polls: a Quinnipiac poll of over 1200 RVs conducted during roughly the same period showing McCain up 4, and a Rasmussen poll of LVs (single-day, too so mostly unaffected by the news) showing McCain up 1. What's especially galling about this is that all one needed to do is follow a link provided by Kos to SUSA's site to see that indeed, it was a poll of registered voters. Currently the story's got 163 comments, not one of which seeks to correct Dear Leader's misstep. Listen, I'm not expecting these folks to get a whiff of reality anytime soon - but please, can they at least get the small stuff right?

Also, for what it's worth, I have to think that those Rasmussen numbers are closer to the truth than the SUSA numbers. Why? Well for one thing SUSA's crosstabs indicate that 17% of black voters in the sample support McCain. Case closed. Bunk poll. Interestingly, Rasmussen's poll also indicates that Obama has higher unfavorables, and lower favorables, than McCain in the Buckeye state.

This isn't to say that McCain is going to win Ohio, which he basically must do to win the White House, just that he's probably in a better position to do so than Obama. After all, Ohio Democrats are the sort that Obama has such trouble with - the kind who might confuse white wine and vinegar (and for whom screw-top bottles of vino are no longer just edging into acceptability) - which is to say blue collar types. Sure the state of the economy as portrayed by the media helps Obama, but it may not be enough if he comes across as a guy you wouldn't want to have a beer with (a metric I personally dislike, but appreciate when Democrats are dumb enough to nominate Obama-types).