After getting slammed by NewsBusters for making a demonstrably false claim, Rachel Maddow refrained from repeating it when given the opportunity 24 hours later.
Here's Maddow on her MSNBC show Monday, the eve of the epochal recall election in Wisconsin, saying this about pre-recall polling (video after page break) --
No poll since April has put Tom Barrett ahead of Scott Walker. But no poll has put Scott Walker above 50 percent at all!
As I wrote on Tuesday, the second part of Maddow's assertion was patently untrue. No less than four separate polls since April -- three by WeAskAmerica and one from Marquette University -- put Walker above 50 percent, as reported at RealClearPolitics.
Here's what Maddow said Tuesday night after NBC News projected Walker to prevail in the Wisconsin recall less than an hour after the polls closed --
So it's a huge win for the Republicans in the state of Wisconsin and it's a real disappointment for the Democrats who felt that they did have a chance of taking back the governor's office before the end of that governor's first term. They thought that even though their candidate, Tom Barrett, never led once in the polls after he became the nominee. Meanwhile, the balance of power in the Wisconsin state senate ...
Meanwhile, please ignore what I told you last night about Walker and polls ...
