Pew Research wins iMediaEthics 7th Annual Top Ten "Dubious Polling" Awards in 2015

NEW YORK, Jan. 22, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- iMediaEthics announces its seventh Top 10 Dubious Polling Awards. Each year, David Moore, iMediaEthics polling director and a former Gallup pollster, presents his satirical look at some of the most dubious media polls of the past year.

At the top of this year's annual awards is the Polarize America Award, won by Pew Research for flacking the idea of an increasing polarized America, even as its own polls provide evidence to the contrary.

Ever since 2003, Pew has been pushing the idea of an evenly divided and increasingly polarized public, and each year their poll is easily refuted by the evidence. This year was no exception.

Some of the other awards include:

Remedial Math Award, given to Fox News which presented a chart showing 137 percent of New Jersey residents had an opinion on whether Governor Chris Christie was aware of the infamous bridge closing.

Blind Faith Award, given to Cory Turner of NPR, who opined that two polls, with completely contradictory findings about the acceptability of the Core Curriculum, were nevertheless "both" right.

Oops Award, to the entire polling industry for its less than stellar performance in the 2014 mid-term elections. While the polls alerted us to the possibility that the GOP would regain majority control of the Senate and increase their membership in the House, they nevertheless missed the margins of victory "by a mile."

The Stephen King Award (unauthorized), won by The ABC/Washington Post poll for its scary coverage of opinion on the Ebola crisis.

Read the full list of winners on iMediaEthics.

David W. Moore, is a Senior Fellow with the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is a former Vice President of the Gallup Organization and was a senior editor with the Gallup Poll for thirteen years. He is author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls (Beacon, 2008; trade paperback edition, 2009).

iMediaEthics is published by Art Science Research Laboratory, a not-for-profit co-founded by its director, Rhonda Roland Shearer, an artist, art historian and award winning journalist, and her late husband, Harvard professor and scientist Stephen Jay Gould. ASRL promotes the media's use of scientific methods and experts before publication.

SOURCE iMediaEthics