Tea Party Movement Tops Established Parties in NBC/WSJ Poll Despite Biased Question, Skewed Sample

Subject: txt 2010 msm bias fnn gdd -
Geoffrey Dickens documented the furor of MSNBC's Chris Mathews over the results of an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (PDF).

Specifically, Mathews was irked that the Tea Party Movement (TPM) was viewed quite a bit more favorably than the two major political parties by those polled (VP=Very Positive; SP=Somewhat Positive; N=Neutral; SN=Somewhat Negative; VN=Very Negative; DK=No Opinion):

• Tea Party Movement: VP-20%; SP-21%; N-21%; SN-10%; VN-13%; DK-15%
• Democratic Party: VP-10%; SP-25%; N-19%; SN-19%; VN-26%; DK-1%
• Republican Party: VP-5%; SP-23%; N-27%; SN-24%; VN-19%; DK-2%

Mathews dismissed the TPM's convincing advantage over the established parties, especially in higher strong positives and lower strong negatives, as being the result of a biased poll question working in the Tea Partiers' favor. I don't think so. In fact, I think the result occurred even though the question is loaded against the TPM.

Here is the full text of the Tea Party poll question...

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