Imagine you’re taking a survey about soda. First question is “Do you like Pepsi?” #2: “Do you like Coke?” #3: “If you were given a choice between a can of Pepsi or a can of Coke, which soda would you choose?” #4: “Do you generally prefer drinking Pepsi or Coke?” #5 “Which has a prettier can, Pepsi or Coke?” and finally #6: “If you were given a choice between a can of Coke or a can of Diet Rite, which would you choose?”
Now, don’t ya kinda feel like a Coke? Okay, regardless of what kind of cola you drink, whether or not you even like soda (or “pop” as they call it in Pittsburgh), the point is: it was a biased poll. The lesser known, but refreshing Diet Rite didn’t get mentioned until the very last question. If you really wanted to know what cola people prefer you would need to include all colas in an equal number of questions, right?
Problem is, political polls are far too often done the same way. For many months, my candidate for the US Senate, Chuck Pennacchio, was excluded from polls entirely. This despite the fact that Chuck was filed with the FEC and on the campaign trail longer than his main Democratic primary opponent, Bob Casey Jr.. Not to mention that last Spring Barbara Hafer and Joe Hoeffel were included in polls against Santorum, even though they were never even officially in the race.
It wasn’t until this Fall that Chuck Pennacchio, was finally included in a Keystone poll… but only against Casey. I’m too lazy to google it, but I think the numbers were 67% Casey – 5% Pennacchio. Needless to say, I was very discouraged when I saw it. That is, until I realized it was push poll just like the one above; heavily biased in Coke II… I mean, Casey’s favor. Casey’s name is repeated in multiple questions and pounded into a respondent’s head before they poll Casey v. Pennacchio
You can hear Chuck’s comments on these polls in his recent Radio Times interview here.
Another problem with political polls (especially for primaries) is they don’t predict voter turnout. Remember in the 2002 Gubernatorial primary, Casey maintained a huge lead over Rendell in the polls but still lost. Only about 1 in 12 (8% of) registered voters vote in primaries. That means Pennacchio only needs 4% +1 Democrats to vote for him on May 16th to win. If the 5% who said they’d vote for Pennacchio are much more likely to actually show up at the polls than those who said they’d vote for Casey, then Chuck Pennacchio may be much closer to winning the primary than pundits (or the Casey campaign) would have us believe. And that may very likely be the case because, Pennacchio’s campaign has focused mainly on reaching the Democratic “super voters” who are guaranteed to vote on primary day. And if Chuck’s grassroots endorsements are any indication, they like what they hear.
The only scientific poll to include all D&R candidates (and have an equal number of questions for each) found that after respondents learned the candidates’ positions on the issues, Chuck Pennacchio actually had a stronger lead over Santorum than Casey.
So frankly I find the Casey apologists’ “Chuck can’t win” argument a little hard to swallow.
That being said, the more Democrats who hear about Chuck, the better his chances. He’ll be running some radio spots soon. Give them a listen, and contribute to help him become Pennsylvania’s Paul Wellstone.
The polls are clearly biased, and yet they show Casey’s alleged lead over Santorum is very weak indeed. The vast majority of voters know virtually nothing about him thanks to his invisible campaign. What is coming through in the polls is anti-Santorum sentiment. As voters realize how much Casey and Santorum have in common his numbers will take a dive in my opinion.
I think Chuck Pennacchio is going to shock a lot of people this May. I also firmly believe that he is the only candidate who can beat Santorum.
Interesting thing about the recent polls. The numbers on Casey/Santorum all line up. So you have to figure the sampling error is quite low between and among them. The big disparity shows up when questioning about Santorum v. Pennacchio and Santorum v. Sandals, Zogby showed that with no information about the candidates’ positions provided, Chuck and Santorum were statistically tied. Muhlenberg, which followed Dave’s example above, produced a much lower result for Chuck — although the difference was still less than Casey’s lead over Santorum which is expected to narrow sharply. So I’m not sure the Morning Call’s phrase “batted away” was at all justified.
The difference between the polls was that Zogby’s first set of questions just did straight head to heads down the list of all candidates, pitting Dems against Republicans. The Muhlenberg poll did three questions about Casey and Santorum and made the questions about Pennacchio and Sandals a fallback to one of them. In other words, it treated them like Diet Rite.
I also think many voters are unlikely to pick a candidate they never heard of / know nothing about in a poll against a well known candidate like Casey. Even if they don’t particularly like Casey, they won’t pick a candidate they don’t know because he might be even worse. Like Zell Miller, perhaps.
Thus, in the primary polls that show Chuck getting 5% against Casey, that tells us that at least 5% of PA Dems have heard of and support Chuck Pennacchio. Thus, if those 5% vote in the primaries, Chuck has a great chance of winning.
Still do not understand how Chuck can get almost half of the Bucks & Lancaster counties committee people to vote to endorse him, and people still believe this 2-5% shite.
How do the polling companies account for this? Do they honestly believe that Committee People are so outside the norm? Granted, they are more educated than the normal voter, but they also are more likely to listen to the DLC.
Even if their questions were perfect, the polls are still fishy. If only because more than 2-5% of people that I meet on the street are as repulsed by Casey as Santorum, plus the counties do not like Casey. Do they and say “Pee-na-a-chee-oh” or something?
I know Chuck has a much better chance than any pundit on TV or such will give him right now. I think a lot of them are already invested in Casey winning and many of them are going with the flow and not doing and investigating for their journalism.
Casey is such a name recognition candidate almost everyone I speak to admits they don’t know any of his positions but they were going to vote for him if they decide to vote. But people don’t make a point to participate in a primary they don’t know anything about. They want to beat Santorum so they will show up for the general.
I think about 1 in 12 people who responded for Casey will come out to vote and I think Chuck’s voters will come out at a rate of like 75-90 percent.
In my county I have 94,000 active democrats and another 20k who are inactive. So I imagine the turnout will be less than 10k…wait is that right? hmm wait to late at night for me to be doing math. The point is we’re gunna freaking win this thing!
I have really been wondering how the phone pollsters have been pronouncing Chuck’s last name. Even A lot of his supporters think it’s like “Penash-ee-oh” when its actually Penn- och- ee-oh”.
Even people who are aware of Chuck, haven’t necessarily heard his name pronounced correctly on the radio. So who knows if the phone pollsters did it correctly or consistently?
it to me like a few hundred times now.