FROM THE NEWMAN CAMPAIGN:
St. Louis – Stacey Newman, candidate for State Representative in the 73rd District, announced the results of a new poll conducted by the campaign in which 52% of 989 likely voters say they plan to vote for Newman in the August 5th primary. Of those voters, only 13% say they plan to vote for her opponent, Steve Brown.
“This is very exciting news,” Stacey said after viewing the results. “These numbers are very encouraging, especially this early in the process.”
In addition to the recent poll, the Missouri Women’s Leadership Coalition and the Missouri ERA PAC announced today their endorsements of Stacey Newman for state representative.
The Missouri Women’s Leadership Coalition and the Missouri ERA PAC are statewide organizations that promote and endorse progressive pro-choice candidates.
Seems to be the reverse of the recent Brown poll.
When one candidate says the polls have them way ahead, and the other says the opposite, somebody must be wrong.
I don’t know that anyone is being untruthful per se, but if we take a deeper look into this, it starts to look like maybe Newman’s camp is getting a bit ahead of themselves – perhaps because they lack an understanding of some of the nuances of polling, perhaps because they are trying to show some electability to potential donors/supporters.
1. Who did the polls?
Brown’s camp actually used a credible pollster – Momentum Analysis – based in D.C. That is a serious political research outfit not known for conducting polls that are meant only for PR. Newman’s press release has no information about who conducted the poll. And with 989 respondents, it would have been very expensive – and unnecessarily so. (Doubling the survey size and cost only reduces the margin of error by a couple percentage points.) I also doubt – based on her modest campaign fund – that she would have spent money on a professional poll when there is so much campaigning left to be done.
2. The difference between a professional and amateur poll
When a candidate hires a professional pollster, s/he is interested in finding out what is going on in the heads of her/his district’s voters. S/he may also test some messages to see what works and what does not, but those messages are tested AFTER respondents have been asked to weigh in on the race. That way, the pollster gets an accurate representation of what people think before the poll is conducted. Based on the wording of Brown’s press release, this number is most likely the one reported by his campaign.
An Amateur pollster may not have been so careful as to question voters before filling their heads full of positive and negative messages about the candidates. Especially if the poll was done by the campaign itself, it is not unlikely that respondents would feel compelled to acquiesce to the callers’ obvious wish that they support Newman. When an amateur pollster tells you ten reasons that Candidate X is great and ten reasons that Candidate Y is awful, it is only polite to respond that you would vote for Candidate X.
But who knows? Maybe Newman’s camp did spend 25% of their bank account on a professional poll that unnecessarily oversampled a population that just happened to completely switch their preferences in the course of a few weeks.
It’s possible… but not likely.