Polls, the mainstay of news reporting these days, are rapidly losing their luster as many mainstream media outlets not only sponsor these polls but skew them in a variety of ways in order to create news and assist their favored candidate.  The only time the pollsters who are retained by these media outlets are concerned about their reputations are within a few weeks of an election when they use much better methodology to predict the outcome.

Today the Washington Post is all but dancing in the street about the result of their recent poll showing Obama leading Romney by 2 points overall and tied with Romney relative to whom the people trust to handle the economy. 

However as Mike Flynn at Breitbart.com points out it took some heavy lifting with the numbers to get Obama up that high:

Specifically, The Post poll assumes a collapse in GOP turnout.  The partisan breakdown of the poll is D-32, R-22, I-38.  In other words, only 22% of the voters sampled were Republicans.  If only 22% of the voters in November were Republicans, it would be the lowest turnout for the GOP in modern history.

In 2010, 35% of voters were Republican.   In 2008, the year Obama swept into the White House, 32% of voters were Republican.  Even in 2006, the year Democrats took control of Congress, 36% of voters were Republican.

Remember the partisan screen on this poll isn't an accident or quirk of the sample.  It's the direct result of specific choices made by the pollster to "weight" the sample to reflect demographics and other characteristics of the electorate. If 22% of the sample is Republicans, it's because the pollster "weighted" the poll that way.

It's only May, but the media's support for Obama is already blinding them to reality. 

It also should be pointed out that this is a poll of registered voters, 40% of whom do not vote in any election.   A poll with likely voters would have much more credibility but the sample make-up as well as the phrasing of the question also enters into any poll bias.   The American public should ignore the polls until September/October, unless there are dramatic changes in polls of likely voters.

This is all part and parcel of the mainstream media's ongoing effort to prop up and support their candidate: Barack Obama, regardless of his failures or what may come out from his long overdue vetting by the alternative media.