Remember, the biggest battle is for your mind…

♦ Earlier today ABC/WaPo announced a new “media daily tracking poll“; a collaboration with Langer Research and Associates, a progressively minded strategic partner.

Fortitously, on the same day, WikiLeaks reveals an internal communication within the Clinton camp that also discusses “media polling” and provides an extensive attachment to an archived Atlas Project political polling research memo.

[We have formatted into a pdf for your review]

The combination of the two events provides an excellent opportunity to show and discuss how ‘media polling’ is constructed to sell an approved (and intentional) storyline; a narrative.

Before getting to the Atlas Project memo it is important to step back and review the commentary within the WikiLeaks email:

(link)

Pay attention to the underlined aspect: “maximize what we get out of our media polling“.

It is important to understand what this is not. This is not some stunning revelation that ultimately proves that all polling is crap. Indeed, as we have repeatedly shared over the past several years, not all polling is BS. It’s the media delivered polling that’s crap.

….Not all polls are “media polls”, but all “media polls” are crap….

Where “crap” can be described as polling done in an effort to sell a specific narrative.

Media polling, by it’s nature and construct, is designed to provide the media entity with a tool to sell the same ideological bias that is inherent within their other print, broadcast and journalistic endeavors.

Contractors (pollsters) who sell media polling are producing a product for their customer, the media entity. If the contractor does not provide the type of product the customer wants, the customer will simply go elsewhere with their money for another contractor. It’s a very simple business transaction. However, within this transactional conflict-of-interest is where you find the reasoning for the inherent data bias.

For more than a few years we have outlined some of the worst (least trustworthy) pollsters in that regard. Those who openly sell a specific style of product (their ridiculous polls), for a specific customer. On some occasions, we have also outlined the internal media personality who sells the narrative as delivered by their contractor.

The worst of the worst media polls include:

ABC / Washington Post (Gary Langer Pollster)

CBS / New York Times

NBC / Wall Street Journal (Mark Murray, NBC) Hart Research and Associates.

Fox News (Daron Shaw) Shaw Research Associates

Monmouth University (Patrick Murray, Pollster)

PPP Polling – [but, unlike the above, they admit their ideological bias]

However, we also warned people when we revealed the NBC connection to Hart Research & Associates and to Priorities Action USA (Clinton Super PAC), as an example of the way media polls are constructed, they would shift their payment mechanisms and go dark to avoid the sunlight. Pages #157, 190, 210 of the October FEC filing (<-pdf) show how much one NBC pollster has been paid since September. It’s a staggering amount of money.

[Just an fyi, page 192 shows Clinton paid Buzzfeed $500,000 for a month of “ads” too]

The key takeaway from the WikiLeaks email is an understanding there’s a complete disconnect between research polling (usually internal), and “media polling” which is designed to sell a narrative.

Maximizing what a political campaign gets out of “our media polling” (key word “our“), is saying to maximize the usefulness of the narrative, the “media narrative”. It’s not “the media polling“, it’s “our media polling” because they pay for it.

This is why we have continued to pull back these covers and expose the inherent bias in delivery. There is ZERO value in media polling. It’s all crap, specifically designed to sell a story as constructed by the political ideology of the corporate media entity board room.

Also, remember it’s not just “big media” doing this. Do you really think Nate Silver works for nothing? Who are the investors in Nate Silver, and what do they intend to get out of that relationship? No-one (directly attached to the delivery of the product) is clean in this political media/corporate polling business.

Which brings us to: “[…] the inaugural ABC News 2016 election tracking poll” released today.

Gee Wally, why do you think ABC would be starting a new daily tracking poll this year? Hmmm, lemme think Opie, mayhaps perchance if I contemplate long enough I will find a way to reconcile that new engagement….

Could it possibly be because a careful narrative needs careful control. Could it be because like-minded travelers are concerned the non-media polling outfits might just possibly show a fundamentally divergent reality,… and therefore in order to retain the objective corporate ABC/WaPo needs to construct a day-by-day ruse to sell and hold on to their preferred script.

….DUH !

No, Hillary Clinton is NOT ahead by 12 points. And sorry, NO, Hillary Clinton is not winning male voters by 3 points now (a difference of 24 points from Rasmussen and Reuters). Go sell crazy someplace else.

ZeroHedge has a good deconstruction here.

As promised, here’s the Atlas Research Polling Memo:

Last night in Cleveland Ohio