I’m beginning to believe that El Pais has made an editorial decision to support John McCain in his presidential bid. I first got this impression, two Sundays ago when the ran a front page story about him that extended to the following two pages touting him as a hero. I’ll just wait and see if they do the same for the Democratic Candidate once he or she is finally chosen.

This afternoon I was dismayed by a rather glaring error in their reporting of the latest Reuters/Zogby poll. The El Pais article ran as follows:

“El candidato republicano, John McCain, ganaría tanto a Barack Obama como Hillary Clinton de celebrarse hoy las elecciones presidenciales estadounidenses, según el último estudio hecho público por Reuters/Zogby.”

Now, let’s take a look at the first sentence of the original article out of Reuters:

“Republican presidential candidate John McCain runs even with Democratic rival Barack Obama and narrowly leads Hillary Clinton in potential match-ups in November, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.”

Which begs the question: is this the same?

Did this poll report the same results for an Obama-McCain match-up as it did for a Clinton-McCain match-up? Absolutely not. Then why is El Pais reporting it that way? One can only guess. It’s either lazy translating or are they really trying to help John McCain win the votes of the 80-100,000 American citizens living in Spain.