Poll vault
It's been said that good political polling is equal parts art and science. But the same goes for interpreting poll numbers.
For an illustration of that maxim, and a look at the art and science both falling short, take a look at Sunday's survey in the Deseret Morning News. The story says that incumbent Rep. Chris Cannon could face a tough re-election bid. That part is pretty much common sense. But for proof, the DNews looks to a Dan Jones poll that shows 30 percent favor Cannon to
19 percent for his top Republican challenger, David Leavitt, and less for Jason Chaffetz.
These numbers, however, are basically worthless for a couple of reasons.
The sample consists of "residents." That's not voting-aged residents or registered voters or likely voters or registered Republicans. It's just residents.
The public preference doesn't mean squat at this point. The general public -- those sampled in this poll -- won't get a say until November. Before then there will be delegate selection, a convention and probably a primary. Right now, it's all about the delegates, and they don't get picked until Tuesday.
That, of course, doesn't stop the candidates from offering meaningless spin to the meaningless results, including Leavitt's odd assertion that he feels good about the numbers since he's only been campaigning for a month. You could see where that might be encouraging -- if it were true. But Leavitt filed his "Statement of Organization" declaring himself a candidate with the Federal Elections Commission in May of 2007 -- approaching a year ago -- and he had spent $132,593 just through the end of 2007. That's a lot of campaign money to be spent not campaigning.
Wonder how much more he's spent in the last month, you know, since he started campaigning.
-- Robert Gehrke
For an illustration of that maxim, and a look at the art and science both falling short, take a look at Sunday's survey in the Deseret Morning News. The story says that incumbent Rep. Chris Cannon could face a tough re-election bid. That part is pretty much common sense. But for proof, the DNews looks to a Dan Jones poll that shows 30 percent favor Cannon to
19 percent for his top Republican challenger, David Leavitt, and less for Jason Chaffetz.These numbers, however, are basically worthless for a couple of reasons.
The sample consists of "residents." That's not voting-aged residents or registered voters or likely voters or registered Republicans. It's just residents.
The public preference doesn't mean squat at this point. The general public -- those sampled in this poll -- won't get a say until November. Before then there will be delegate selection, a convention and probably a primary. Right now, it's all about the delegates, and they don't get picked until Tuesday.
That, of course, doesn't stop the candidates from offering meaningless spin to the meaningless results, including Leavitt's odd assertion that he feels good about the numbers since he's only been campaigning for a month. You could see where that might be encouraging -- if it were true. But Leavitt filed his "Statement of Organization" declaring himself a candidate with the Federal Elections Commission in May of 2007 -- approaching a year ago -- and he had spent $132,593 just through the end of 2007. That's a lot of campaign money to be spent not campaigning.
Wonder how much more he's spent in the last month, you know, since he started campaigning.
-- Robert Gehrke
10:28 PM
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