The Daily Beast's Confused Obama Poll

CORRECTION: The Daily Beast poll did in fact compare Obama approval rating results from before and after the news of Osama bin Laden's death was announced. And the Daily Beast poll broke out those results separately. The premise of my post is therefore incorrect. I regret the error.

The Daily Beast is claiming that the president received no Osama bin Laden-related bounce in its new poll.

Here's the Daily Beast's summary [emphasis added]:

While the public lauds the president's performance killing Bin Laden, he got no overall bounce in a new Newsweek/Daily Beast poll. Also: Obama vs. Bush on terror and Obama vs. Trump in 2012.

So readers assume that like the Washington Post, which turned around a new poll on Monday to gage public reaction to the bin Laden news, so too did the Daily Beast.

Not quite:

How much overall boost did President Obama get from the capture of Osama Bin Laden? None, according to an exclusive Newsweek / Daily Beast poll encompassing 1,200 American adults, conducted in the two days immediately before the president's Sunday announcement about the terrorist leader, and then the two days immediately after.

That doesn't make much sense. How could a poll partially conducted two days before the bin Laden announcement calculate how Americans felt about Obama in light of the news from Pakistan? (Time travel?)

Claiming that the president's post-bin Laden job approval rating has not changed, the Daily Beast relies on a poll in which half of the respondents were contacted before news of bin Laden's death was announced.

That seems quite odd.