CBS released two battleground state polls today, one from Pennsylvania and one from North Carolina. Both polls showed a Clinton lead, +8 in Pennsylvania and +4 in North Carolina. Looks good for Hillary, right? At first blush, yes. But these are just registered voter polls, which always favor Democrats and do not predict the result on election day. What is surprising about these polls is not their results because they are registered voter polls and registered voter polls always favor Democrats. Even Nate Silver admits this. The most surprising thing about these polls is that they claimed they were likely voter polls, presumably to cause readers to attach the higher level of credibility that comes with the likely voter label. To my great surprise, in both polls 1100 registered voters were interviewed. And in both polls, the CBS pollster assumed a 99% of registerd voters were likely voters. Apparently almost no registered voters will stay home on election day, astounding accomplishment. Voter turnout was 54.2% in 2000, 60.4% in 2004, 62.3% in 2008 and 57.5% in 2012. Now we can expect a major jump, probably over 90% turnout, if this assumption is correct. Please follow my new account on Twitter for daily updates on the election!

This is deceptive reporting on a legitimate registered voter poll. Readers associate greater reliability on a likely voter poll, but this was not a likely voter poll. CBS should relabel this poll a registered voter poll to maintain credibility on this. Check out the screen grabs below from CBS showing that 99% of the registered voters they polled were deemed likely to vote