<\/a>Last night, Rachel Maddow reported that a just-released national poll by liberal-leaning PPP gives Hilllary Clinton the edge against Donald Trump. At first glance, for a Hillary supporter like me, that was comforting news. Unfortunately, in addition to asking likely voters for their Presidential preference, the pollsters also asked a bunch of inane questions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Salon <\/a>reports that…<\/p>\n

The liberal-leaning pollsters also asked African-American voters to compare their\u00a0preference for a Trump presidency to a list of awful things such as bedbugs, junk mail, carnies, bubonic plague and middle airplane seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can now report, this year\u2019s Republican presidential nominee is less popular than middle seats on airplanes,\u201d\u00a0Maddow announced,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maddow made that pronouncement with the snarky, yuck-yuck glee that can turn her hour of pirme- time into something more like a late-night comedy show than the serious, fact-based program that, at its best, it can be.<\/p>\n

Maddow’s attitude was unfortunate. But the true culprit here is the poll itself. Somebody at the otherwise well-respected PPP [Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com gives it a B+]<\/a>, thought it would be cute to ask a bunch of sophomoric questions.<\/p>\n

All I can say is that including those questions, and reporting the corresponding answers as a way of trying to be hip, taints the seriousness of PPP,\u00a0 throws doubt into their methodology, and ultimately makes me feel less confident in the value of their results.<\/p>\n

Here’s the clip:<\/p>\n