Those waking up to read the news this morning will undoubtedly be "shocked" by the latest ABC / Washington Post goal seeking report (aka "poll") that shows Hillary opening up a 12-point lead with likely voters after the latest debate last Wednesday.  Ironically, this latest polling farce was "embargoed for release after 9 a.m." EST which will certainly make it a dominant topic of conversation on all the morning talk shows.

Of course, like many of the recent polls from the likes of Reuters, ABC and The Washington Post, something curious emerges when you look just beneath the surface of the headline 12-point lead. 

"METHODOLOGY – This ABC News poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 20-22, 2016, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 874 likely voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 36-27-31 percent, Democrats - Republicans - Independents."

As we've pointed out numerous times in the past, in response to Reuters' efforts to "tweak" their polls, per the The Pew Research Center, at least since 1992, democrats have never enjoyed a 9-point registration gap despite the folks at ABC and The Washington Post somehow convincing themselves it was a reasonable margin.

Of course, despite the glaring bias in the sample pool, Hillary's obedient lap dog, John Harwood, was among the first to pump the results by tweeting out the following just two minutes after the embargo was lifted:

No one knows how to suck up to the Clinton campaign like John (#HarDwoodForHillary)...

This new poll comes just 9 days after a previous ABC / Washington Post poll which showed only a 4-point national lead for Clinton.  While ABC and WaPo claim the massive swing came as the result of Trump's "treatment of women and his reluctance to endorse the election’s legitimacy" during the debate, it seems unlikely that anyone truly believes that Wednesday's debate caused an 8-point swing in voter preference.  Certainly not these people on CNN:

In any event, here is how ABC and WaPo have seen the polling data trend over time.  Ironically, they found absolutely no dip for Hillary after her 9/11 "medical episode", probably one of the biggest events of the election season so far, but were able to convince themselves that Wednesday's debate caused an 8 point swing.

Meanwhile, with huge variances in preference across demographics one can easily see how simple it is to "rig" a poll by over indexing to one group vs. another.  While the pollsters release the the split of the sample pool by political affiliation, they do not share the split by any of the following demographics which are just as important to determining the outcome of the poll.

Just one more example of how to rig a poll and dominate a Sunday morning news cycle.

The full ABC / Washington Post Poll can be read here: