John McCain and Barack Obama are not the only ones telling us lies about politics. Journalists are doing it, too, but it is less noticed because journalists aren’t exposing it.
So Wednesday will not only bring an end to the incessant broadcasting of some of the most dishonest television advertising in campaign history and those designed-to-frighten robocalls. We will also be given a respite from some of the most overused and basically wrong ideas in political reporting.
One of the worst is “statistical dead heat” or “statistical tie.” It is used to describe a poll, or polls, when one candidate has a lead no greater than the poll’s margin of sampling error.
The trouble with this phrase is that it evokes the most precise sort of tie imaginable — two horses, or runners, at the finish line at exactly the same moment — for something that really isn’t a tie. If, for example, a poll shows Jones with a 52-to-48 percent lead over Smith (and a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points), that 4-point lead is the single most likely reality; 51-49 and 53-47 are next most likely; 50-50 comes next; along with Jones ahead, 54-46. What we really have is “a lead too small to take seriously.” That’s not as colorful as “statistical dead heat,” which I coined in 1979 to my lasting shame, but it’s accurate.
Another hoary concept of political reporting is the “undecided voter.” It conjures up two images, either of someone constantly measuring a weighty decision or someone paying so little attention to have really no opinion. The second group of people, much research shows, really don’t vote much of the time. As to the others, the National Annenberg Election Survey of 2004 found that if you paid attention to other questions, like a respondent’s party or whether he or she gave one candidate a higher favorability rating — you knew how most people who wouldn’t tell you their voting choice would vote.
Finally there is the “filibuster-proof Senate.” It makes sense for the Democrats to raise money for this ambition as they seek 60 senators (and for Republicans to decry it as a peril to the nation). But there is no such thing.
It does take 60 votes to shut off a filibuster. But, depending on the issue, from war to abortion, there will usually be a few deserters from the party’s position, especially if Democrats are counting Joe Lieberman as one of their 60.
Sure, fewer filibusters would succeed if Democrats had 60 senators, but a more precise, if less catchy, term would be “filibuster-resistant majority.”
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Adam Clymer is a former Washington correspondent of The New York Times and a recovering pollster.
