Joe Scarborough Blasts ‘Garbage’ NY Times Poll That ‘Warps Reality’: Editors Have to ‘Know What They’re Doing’
Joe Scarborough and John Heilemann engaged in a spirited yet convivial discussion over a recent New York Times Sienna Poll, which showed President Joe Biden behind former President Donald Trump in several crucial swing states.
To be fair, Scarborough pretty much went off on the NY Times and its allegedly questionable methodology, among other notable pollsters. Heilleman was there to lightly push back and help make for compelling and informative morning show television fare. They each succeeded.
The segment opened with a number of polls showing Biden and Trump neck and neck, but the NY Times poll was followed by citing experts questioning both its methodology and findings. Scarborough and Heilleman had a polite back and forth over it until the Morning Joe host just went off on the NY Times and what he alleged was disingenuous reporting.
“The New York Times right now is actively shaping the election cycles where this poll comes out on a Sunday and on Monday people go, ‘Oh, and I heard it,’ and I’m sitting there going, oh, don’t be so stupid,” Scarborough said.
‘There’s one poll that’s wildly skewed every time, and it does shape if it’s a New York Times poll versus the Morning Consult poll. And the New York Times then amplifies it 15, 16, 17 times. It warps reality,” he continued. “And everybody responds to that in the media and in the political world.”
Heilemann argued that the “best bulwark” against unreliable or outlying polls is for informed people not to put too much stock in them. Scarborough pounced, not on his contributor and friend but on the NY Times editors.
“It distorts all of the opinion; It distorts everything,” Scarborough said of the poll. “And that keeps happening every month when this comes out. And then finally, about two weeks later, after the residue of the New York Times-Siena poll leaves, people go, ‘Oh, I think Joe Biden’s on a winning streak.’ And then two weeks later, it comes out again, and it’s garbage. It’s an outlier.”
“And yes, The New York Times, when they have all of these experts questioning the methodology when they’re calling like 20% of of the people, likely voters who have never voted before or didn’t vote in the last two primaries when when they’re even quoting people who said they’re switching their vote from Joe Biden, who have never voted before?” Scarborough asked rhetorically. “I’m sorry, the New York Times has to know what they’re doing.”
Watch above via MSNBC
