I used to think that Rasmussen, Mason-Dixon, and Gallup were pretty skeevy GOP-friendly polling outfits, but the Quinnipiac folk seem to be giving them a run for their money lately (emphases mine):
It was a lightning bolt from the polling universe: two weeks ago, Quinnipiac University found that the most cited description of the most admired woman in American politics was “liar.”
The media jumped on it. Commentators seized on it as definitive proof that the American electorate distrusts Hillary Clinton.
But the conclusion was a sham.
Back on August 29th, we deconstructed the poll, looked at the internals and found that it was highly misleading. While Quinnipiac presented the poll as evidence that voters associated “liar” with Hillary, we demonstrated that it was Republican and Republican-leaning respondents to the Q-poll who linked Hillary to liar and other derogatory terms (including “bitch”). It is a vastly different thing for Republicans, parroting Fox news and talk radio, to hurl misogynistic insults at Hillary than for all voters to believe Hillary is a liar.
The poll was so slanted that at least one prominent journalist has disavowed it, and Q is being pushed to apologize for it.
More past the jump.
Quinnipiac might have able to get away with it if it was just guys like Peter Daou pointing it out, but then Mediaite's Tommy Christopher jumped into the fray:
Because of the way the results were reported, Republicans and Republican leaners comprised 45% of the reported responses, while Dems and Dem-leaners made up only 36%. Again, this analysis still leaves out a good 20% of the overall responses (ones which were mentioned one time or less), but when you consider the responses in context, it’s pretty clear that the negative responses were overwhelmingly from Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, and that there’s a much higher degree of descriptive unanimity among them.
Christopher also had this to say later on, commenting on how Hillary's polling news isn't as bad as has been often reported:
Inthat recent Iowa poll that showed Bernie Sanders leading Hillary by a point, she smoked Sanders and Biden when Democrats were asked if the candidates have “strong leadership qualities” (92% for Clinton, versus 76% for Sanders and 81% for Biden) and on whether they have the “right temperament” for the presidency (89% for Clinton, 65% for Bernie, 81% for Biden). Hillary performed less well on the question of whether the candidate “cares about the needs and problems of people like you,” with 78% to Sanders’ 85% and Biden’s 84%, but still close.
But what do I know? I'm just an Evil Hillary Surrogate who's been here since early November of 2003. (Atrios sent me.)