Republican candidate 'body-slams' Guardian reporter in Montana

[Benton]

(05-26-2017, 12:32 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: The polling was tighter than a lot of people realized. Public polls had a wide range of differences, but the margin of error for those was big (sometimes larger than the pollsters themselves admit, but stats nerds can spot). Internals from the GOP, as well as a couple of more public polls, had the race with a Gianforte lead of between 2 and 4 points. And that was before the incident (GOP internals leaked around 22nd, likely to play the expectations game).

Polling has been going downhill slowly for the last 15(ish) years. Opinions on why vary. Mine is that largely polling relies on people answering their phone and being willing to answer questions for 5-15 minutes, combined with the growth of intentionally misleading poll questions.

For example, a conservative leaning polling group might ask "Do you support the conservative candidate for Montana" while a liberal leaning agency might ask "Are you familiar with the conservative candidate who assaults questioners?"

In this case, they both refer to the same person.

Same with exit polling. If you only approach voters in a specific area (say, one inclined to one party) it skews the data.



Having had a little time to think about it, this isn't much of a story. Reporters are threatened, pushed around, spit at, kicked out. It's part of the job. If the reporter was breaking up someone else's interview (as has been described), he was being incredibly rude, both to the candidate and to his peers. 

More importantly, at that point, Gianforte was not an elected official. He didn't owe anyone his time as a candidate. It's not the same as arresting a reporter for asking questions of a government employee in a public hallway. That is troubling. This? This is just part of covering news.