When it comes to reporting on American presidential elections, news organizations are currently slogging through a less than thrilling part of the cycle. Stories about the 2004 election feel stale. Stories about the 2008 campaign feel premature. Yesterday, however, the innovative minds at CNN came up with a creative solution, focusing on an oft-overlooked aspect of presidential politics — specifically, the hypothetical presidential election of 2005.
In the article, entitled “Poll: Bush would lose an election if held this year,” CNN breaks some big, hypothetical news.
“A majority would vote for a Democrat over President Bush if an election were held this year, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Tuesday,” reported CNN.
“In the latest poll, 55 percent of the respondents said that they would vote for the Democratic candidate if Bush were again running for the presidency this year,” CNN informed us. “Thirty-nine percent of those interviewed said they would vote for Bush in the hypothetical election.”
The only problems with the story, as far as we can tell, are that (a) no presidential election will be held this year, and (b) that fact tends to render the rest of the story completely pointless.
But, in fairness to CNN, the piece also reported on some seemingly striking shifts in President Bush’s current approval rating.
“In the poll, 42 percent of those interviewed approved of the way the president is handling his job and 55 percent disapproved,” noted CNN. “In the previous poll, released October 17, 39 percent approved of Bush’s job performance — the lowest number of his presidency — and 58 percent disapproved.”
“However,” added CNN, “all the numbers are within the poll’s sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, so it’s possible that the public’s opinion has not changed at all.”
We suppose that if the Democrats could win the hypothetical presidential election of 2005, then anything is possible.
It’s also possible that if we were to give an award to a news organization for bravely ignoring the pitfalls of hypothetical political reporting, CNN would get the honor.
Hypothetically speaking, of course.
Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.