Studies are done from time to time in the United States regarding the media and whether it is biased towards the political left (liberal) viewpoint.

It appears that time after time, the result is that the media has a strongly liberal slant and as such, it shouldn't be surprising that the media would like to spend more time with those who share the same viewpoint. In the current United States election cycle, that would be Mr. Obama.

It appears, however, that the United States public doesn't really follow the media's opinion on these matters. While Obama certainly has the media's attention, he isn't up in the polls. Further, the same liberal slant has existed for decades and yet three of the past four United States presidents were somewhat conservative while only one was liberal.

It seems that the U.S. public understands the liberal slant and accepts it, but doesn't really care. Actually, to be more precise, there is a large segment of the United States population that simply ignores the media.

One of the major surprises in the 2004 election was that John Kerry was viewed as having a comfortable lead going into election day and yet he lost the election by a large margin. I suspect that the segment of the population that ignores the media's liberal slant, also doesn't take political polls because they distrust them. As such, any polling prior to election day will favor the liberal candidate. The fact that polls are showing Mr. Obama to be down 1-2 percent, might be understating the situation somewhat. I suspect that he may be down by more than than.

-- Jeff

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"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." --Ronald Reagan