"43% of Americans would consider voting for Charlie Sheen over Barack Obama!"

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I have expressed my concerns with Public Policy Polling before. PPP is a traditionally Democratic firm which now is the official pollster for DailKos, and has a tendency to put a heavy spin on its poll results.

Today PPP officially beclowned itself, releasing a poll which, among other things, pitted Charlie Sheen against, respectively, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin.

Do serious pollsters engage in such publicity stunts?

But it gets even worse, because PPP cherry picked the data to spin the poll against Sarah Palin, with this headline, Palin trails Sheen with independents.

And indeed, according to the cross-tabs, Sheen does better with independents versus Palin (41%) as opposed to Obama (22%).

Why focus only on that measure? Isn't the headline that 24% of the population definitely would choose Charlie Sheen over the sitting President of the United States? Or that another 19% are not sure? How about this headline:

"43% of Americans would consider voting for Charlie Sheen over Barack Obama!"

Or how about this:

"The most media-adored President in history could lose 43% of the vote to Charlie Sheen!"

PPP set out to embarrass Sarah Palin, but ended up embarrassing itself.

If PPP wants to be taken seriously, it should act in a serious manner, and not in the manner we would expect from the official pollster for DailyKos.

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