Checking Fred Hiatt

That poll that Fred Hiatt ran this morning? Showing 2-1 Ahmadinejad support. It was taken three weeks before the vote, before the campaign took off, and it had one huge asterisk in it:

The poll that appears in today's op-ed shows a 2 to 1 lead in the thinnest sense: 34 percent of those polled said they'd vote for Ahmadinejad, 14 percent for Mousavi. That leaves 52 percent unaccounted for. In all, 27 percent expressed no opinion in the election, and another 15 percent refused to answer the question at all. Six percent said they'd vote for none of the listed candidates; the rest for minor candidates.

Troublingly, this enormously pertinent fact was left out of the op-ed. Who edited it? Why were its results distorted to buttress Ahmadinejad? What is Fred Hiatt up to?

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan