Friday, April 16, 2010

Channel 4's Lazy reporting

Why pay to conduct your own poll when you can just use someone's insider poll?

From KTVX:

SALT LAKE (ABC 4 News) - Utah Senator Bob Bennett may no longer be the front-runner for his own party's nomination.

According to reliable Republican sources, Bennett now trails GOP challenger Mike Lee by a significant amount among GOP delegates.

According to our sources, Mike Lee's campaign has conducted two large surveys in the last month.

Each polled between a quarter and a third of the delegates to next month's Republican state convention.

Reportedly, Mike Lee is first with 37 percent of the delegate vote.

Bennett is said to be second at 22 percent.

Tim Bridgewater, according to information given to ABC 4, is third at 20.5%

And Cherilyn Eagar, we're told, is in 4th place at 13% of those polled.


Here's the problem I have with this:

How do we know this was an unbiased poll?

After all, if you're going to be leaking a poll (especially with that much detail), to Chris Vancour, why does it have to be accurate?

For all we know, The question was "If the convention was today, which of the following candidates would you vote for? Mike "Superhero" Lee, Bob "Old Fart Who Likes Big Banks" Bennett, Tim "Nobody" Bridgewater, or Crazy Cherilyn Eagar?"

-Bob

4 comments:

Jay said...

It may be an insider poll, but I'd absolutely believe it... Seems to me based on first-hand reports on Twitter after the caucuses that Bennett is almost certain to lose... These percentages make quite a bit of sense, with the exception that I'd thing that Bennett's numbers are a little high...

Daniel B. said...

Bob, you are right on. Since when are internal polls reliable? Especially polls of a notoriously independent minded group: the state delegates?

arc said...

Since I was polled by the survey in question - I can say it wasn't an unbiased poll.

The person polling tried their best to get me to answer that Mike Lee was to be my first choice.

He isn't. I was on the phone for over 15 min. and was less apt to vote for Mike Lee afterward. Someone undecided might have been moved.

Bennett's poll was 30 min. of pushing and pulling.

The only "unbiased" poll released lately was the Weber County GOP Straw poll of County delegates at convention.

Weber County Convention straw poll results:
Mike: 150
Cherilyn: 129
Bennett: 106
Tim: 48
Fabiano: 29
Cook: 4

Daniel B. said...

and since the Weber County straw poll didn't poll state delegates, it's really useless as an indicator of state delegate interest.