O'Reilly's 'difficulties' interpreting polling statistics

You can hang your coat on the Pinocchio schnozz of Bill O'Reilly, who made Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" (yet again), this time for asserting mythical Pew Research poll results O'Reilly claimed showed "most Americans won't vote for you if you get an endorsement by a gay rights group."

Media Matters quickly shot him down on that front:

A Media Matters for America search turned up no Pew Research Center poll on the topic nor any poll asking a nationwide sample whether respondents would be more or less likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by a gay rights organization. However, as the News Hounds blog noted in response to O'Reilly's claim, an August 6-8 Quinnipiac Poll of voters in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania found that a majority of voters in each state responded that support for a presidential candidate by "gay rights groups" "doesn't ... make a difference" in their level of support for the candidate.

The Faux News Factor 'bot, when called on his lack of any documentation of polling statistics, tried to cloud the issue, but never admitted his "mistake."

During the August 15 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly read an email from Cindi Creager of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation that criticized him for "erroneously report[ing] that a poll found most Americans would not vote for a presidential candidate endorsed by a gay rights organization."

...While O'Reilly noted that the [Quinnipiac] poll was taken "in a few states," not nationally as he had earlier suggested, he did not acknowledge that his original assertion that the result applied to a "majority" of respondents was false. Rather, he simply cited the Quinnipiac poll results from Florida -- which found that 28 percent of respondents would be "less likely" to support a candidate endorsed by a gay rights group, while 60 percent said it "would make no difference," and 10 percent said it would make them "more likely" to support such a candidate -- and added, "That's what I was referring to."

Perhaps Mr. O'Reilly needs a better research assistant. Falafel boo-yah!