USA Today Reports of Tracking Polls Sometime Ignore Sampling Error

Problems Found in Reporting USA Today Pre-Election Polls

“…In a study of the pre-election tracking polls published in USA Today in 2000, of the seven headlines that claimed a changed in the direction of the poll and of the 15 that suggested a difference between the candidates, 17 (68 percent) described poll results that fell within the sampling error and failed to mention this fact. 30 This finding leads to the next research question, which examines this issue for the 2004 campaign.…”

The de-emphasis of sampling error in coverage of presidential approval ratings

“…Some studies have questioned the news media's use of approval poll data in stories that cover "horse race elections" 7 and exit polls. 8 Hickman 9 observed that the news media tend to devote an inordinate amount of attention to marginal changes in polling data, and Reavy 10 and Burns 11 found that news media coverage of pre-election polls seem to emphasize changes or differences that could be explained by sampling error. Patterson 12 argued that these issues, combined with an over-reliance on polls, diminish the overall quality of journalistic coverage of U.S. elections.…”