Saturday, October 7th, 2006...7:09 am
Skepticism
The Mallard has sent out an e-mail touting a new poll that shows him only six points behind Raúl Grijalva. I have a couple of reasons to be skeptical, or at the very least a couple of reasons to wait to see what this poll says. And yes, my reasons are better than “Raúl is my friend all of my friends like him.”
One is that Drake has used numbers, shall we say, creatively in the past. Over the summer, he sent out a fundraising letter touting the fact that he could beat Grijalva given past Republican performance in the district. The numbers assumed that Drake could out-poll John McCain in some areas, and assumed that Drake would get more votes than 2002 Republican nominee Ross Heib in Yuma County, where Heib had been a popular elected official and wasn’t running against a well known incumbent.
The other reason is that it seems to totally defy everything else that is going on in this state. Governor Janet Napolitano is fricasseing Len Munsil despite the Republican registration advantage. Gabrielle Giffords is ahead of Randy Graf in a narrowly Republican district. And, in a district even more Republican, Harry Mitchell is either even or ahead of J. D. Hayworth. So, Repubicans are struggling in Republican constituencies, but in this overwhelmingly Democratic district there are signs of hope for them? Oh please. I’ll wait to see numbers on that one.
Plus, Drake’s campaign so far seems to have consisted of silly stunts like interviewing restaurant employees and dogging Grijalva at events to complain “Why won’t he debate me?” even though he is going to debate him. Not exactly the sort of thing that gets thousands of normally loyal Democrats to jump ship.
My brother was at an event where a Young Republican bragged that the poll showed that Grijalva has an anemic name ID of 27%. This would mean he had higher name ID when he was a Pima County Supervisor running for the office four years ago. That sounds near impossible for an incumbent congressman with a good media operation. With numbers like that, it sounds more like this Northwest Explorer poll showing Graf beating Giffords by some ridiculous number. You know, wishful thinking.
9 Comments
October 7th, 2006 at 11:56 am
I haven’t seen the poll, but I have heard it is a Kenski poll, do it is at least as legit as the last Star poll.
Agin, however, it is not my district so I haven’t followed up on it.
October 7th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
Hard to tell if our Republican friends are just trying to be optimistic or have fallen into the well of delusion!
No one believed that Giffords lead, not even us Dems, was as high as the Zimmerman poll suggested (19%) nor is the recent Zogby poll showing a 8-point race very likely either. Kenski’s poll of two weeks ago showed a 14-point advantage for Giffords over Graf was probably about right. While that number might tighten some, clearly Graf’s candidacy is doomed.
Not only that, but recent polling also suggests that CD 5 has moved from “leans Republican” into the “tossup” column.
I would be very please if Dems just captured 3 of Arizona’s 8 House seats. Now, it appears there’s at least a good chance that we could end up holding 4 on November 8th!
October 7th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
I think polls like that are released by republicans in the hopes of working the “everyone else is switching sides so should you” card.
October 7th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
So you accept Kenski’s numbers when they go Gifford’s way but she is a fraud when it comes to the Drake poll?
Interesting analysis of data there.
The good news is that I believe that we have made the weekly tracking for the Zogby poll, so we will know which polls were outliers soon enough.
My mom-in-law was just polled on wednesday as well, and it wasn’t Zogby, due to the format of the questions asked. It was a simple “who are you voting for?”
So you will have plenty of poll info. I will guarantee you, that it will be closer to the 8% than the 16% however.
October 7th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Framer -
No fraud at all. In the case of Kenski’s Giffords poll, something was actually released. We got to see a polling memo and some internals. All I’m hearing here are rumors of numbers somewhere out there. Thus, the skepicism.
October 7th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
Tedski,
That wasn’t meant for you. I apologize. I don’t have a lot of contacts in the way of the Drake campaign, but since this was a Kenski poll, I would make sure that it was spam-mailed to everybody in Arizona if it were me.
Supposedly it has been sent to the media, but there is no actual reporting on it. Not sure why that is. If I was an average Joe and saw the story teased, I might actually buy a copy of the paper.
I would also make doubly sure the blogs got a copy of it as well. If you spent all that money on a poll, you need to get it out while it can do some good.
October 8th, 2006 at 6:58 am
Framer,
I never made mention nor alluded to in any way a Drake poll. I did do some searching to try and find it, but to no avail. So as far as I’m concerned, no poll exists showing Drake ahead of Raul. So save your sarcasm for an appropriate target.
What I addressed was that Kenski’s recent numbers for Giffords were likely more accurate than any other poll to date (i.e., in the vicinity of a 14% lead).
I find it very interesting myself that you all dismiss any poll showing Giffords’ sizeable lead over Randy, but jump on any poll showing a tighter race and claim that Randy’s got momentum. That’s both hypercritical and untrue.
October 8th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Dogma,
No, my qualifications is that the poll reveal the damn internals. If you cannot do that, I don’t take your poll seriously. Nor should anyone else.
First Star poll Giffords leads 10%
Second Star poll Giffords leads 12%
Zogby poll Giffords leads 8%
This is a realistic trendline. All of the other polls are all over the place, all the way to 25%. I’ll perhaps buy your poll when you can prove to me the randomness of your sample. If you can’t do that, I will treat you like an online poll. Perhaps informative, but I’ll also take two helpings of skepticism.
Personally, I don’t buy the Drake poll for the same reasons. But if you accept the Weekly poll or the Emily’s List poll as gospel, the Drake poll has at least as good as pedigree, if not better.
October 9th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Framer,
First off, why do you keep using the phrase “your poll?” I haven’t conducted any poll, and merely have the benefit of the polls being done by others. Some of which, as you suggest, are better than others.
However, to pick and choose polls based on how they can be spun is exactly what went wrong with the Democratic Party in the 1990s and is what’s wrong with the Republican Party today.
Your “realistic trend line” is a fabrication of selective listening, and does not exist in reality. Even the numbers you cite, if true, portray Graf stuck at a 10% deficit to Giffords.
As much as it might hurt, the Republican Party has become what it once demonized—Your all spin aimed at retaining power without any meaningful agenda the improve the lot of Americans.
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