For every poll there is a reason; Spin, spin, spin again ...

(Apologies to Pete Seeger for the headline)

Scott Walker's troubled campaign for governor tries to put the best light on the latest poll in the governor's race, with a release declaring Jim Doyle to be "among nations (sic) most vulnerable governors."

How embarrassing it must be to be running 19 points behind someone who's so vulnerable. The poll showed Doyle leading Walker 50-31.

But Walker's folks managed to write an entire release about the poll without ever mentioning any head-to-head numbers. Rather, it said "Scott Walker and his Republican rival are statistically equal in position to beating Jim Doyle."

Walker's mystery opponent, Mark Green, actually fared better than Walker in the matchups, losing to Doyle 46-33, a 13-point margin vs. Walker's 19-point gap.

Green says he beats Doyle among people who know both of them, which means nothing because people most likely to know Green at this point are the ones who live in his home base or who are active Republicans. Only one-third of the 600 people surveyed knew enough about Green to have an opinion about him. That means a sample of only 200 people, which is so small it is highly unreliable, knew both. As I mentioned elsewhere, in 1990, Tom Loftus led Tommy Thompson in an early poll among people who knew them both, but that didn't turn out to be an indicator of much of anything at election time.