The good old media waterboy comes through again. Immediately after the speech last night, CNN released the following:

Two out of three Americans who watched President Barack Obama’s health care reform speech Wednesday night favor his health care plans — a 14-point gain among speech-watchers, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national poll of people who tuned into Obama’s address Wednesday night to a joint session of Congress.

Wow … hot stuff huh? You’d think that the magic was back and the silver tongued orator had done it again wouldn’t you? Of course had you bothered to go to the third paragraph you might have become a little uneasy with the result:

The audience for the speech appears to be more Democratic than the U.S. population as a whole. Because of this, the results may favor Obama simply because more Democrats than Republicans tune into the speech.

And had you then made the “jump” and read the second half of the report, you’d have been downright suspicious of the poll’s results.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted just before and just after the president’s speech, with 427 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 5 percentage points.

The sample of speech-watchers in this poll was 45 percent Democratic and 18 percent Republican. Our best estimate of the number of Democrats in the voting age population as a whole indicates that the sample is about 8-10 points more Democratic than the population as a whole.

A 427 sample, loaded with Democrats and a plus or minus 5% sampling error?

Does the word “disregard” say it all?

~McQ