White House criticizes bleak “outlier” Quinnipiac Biden poll

By releasing a memo questioning the Quinnipiac University poll’s methodology, the White House is demonstrating how seriously it takes negative perceptions of the president’s job performance at the outset of a critical midterm year.

It’s also acknowledging the president’s approval rating is well underwater — just not as deep as Quinnipiac found.

“The FiveThirtyEight average of all public polls finds the president’s approval is at 43% approval,” O’Malley Dillon writes. “Quinnipiac, on the other hand, is at 33% approval. This is drastically different from all other recent polls.”…

In her critique, O’Malley Dillon targets the poll’s use of so-called “random digit dialing.” She says the practice has been abandoned by many major polling organizations.