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May 07, 2008

Politicker's Pindell unwittingly shows why Novick is losing

The national Politicker site has a newish blogger named James Pindell who is doing a segment called the Pindell Report. Pindell says that he'll be using "the resources of Politicker's reporting in states to help tell the national political story." So far he's not doing such a great job of getting it right.

Case in point: The newest edition of the Pindell Report suggests (in the form of a question) that Obama's strong showing through April was responsible for the DSCC (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee) downgrading Oregon to its 2nd tier of targeted states. He then goes on to attempt an argument in support of his conclusion. Only thing is... he eschews supporting data in favor of spinning a fanciful tale.

What happened in Oregon in April? A SurveyUSA poll was released and much ballyhooed in Oregon, showing Steve Novick ahead of all challengers at 23% and Jeff Merkley lagging behind at 11%. The very next day the DSCC downgraded Oregon from 1st tier to 2nd tier.

But rather than accept such a clear cause & effect explanation for the DSCC's action, Pindell decided yesterday that somehow Obama must be responsible. He then went on to suggest that Novick is the one who will benefit from Obama's popularity in Oregon, citing newly registered 18-24 year old voters in particular.

If he wants to be taken seriously Pindell ought to have checked the SurveyUSA poll released this last Friday May 2nd before exposing his ignorance in a published report. Not only has Merkley surged in just three weeks to erase Novick's lead in the polls (casting doubt on the veracity of the earlier poll, but that's a side issue), the poll's cross-tab data reveals that Merkley's support among 18-34 year olds nearly tripled. Novick growth with that group less than doubled. So not only is Merkley surging overall, he's surging among the very demographic that Pindell cited.

But that's actually not even the worst of it for Pindell. Contrary to his earlier claim that he'd be using "the resources of Politicker's reporting in states to help tell the national political story," he didn't check with PolitickerOR's post from this past Sunday. If he had then he'd have noticed this buried gem in a piece about Merkley's new ad: "some insiders – maybe even most of them – believe that Republican incumbent Gordon Smith would rather face Novick in the general election." Which really just stated the obvious.

Posted by Kevin at May 7, 2008 08:27 AM