PDA

View Full Version : First internal poll on Lawson race released.




DRV45N05
09-17-2008, 01:32 AM
We at Lawson for Congress have released our first internal poll numbers. B.J. just made a blog post about it.

http://blog.lawsonforcongress.com/20...lling-numbers/

The numbers are:

Price 56%
Lawson 31%
Undecided 13%

The numbers don't look great right now. However, there are a number of things to keep in mind.

* We gave Price's base- Democrats- an 11 percentage point (pp) boost in representation in the poll over the actual percentage of Democrats in the district. (As well as the typical percentage of voters in the 4th District who are Democrats, which is around 45%.) We cut representation of our base, Republicans, by two pps from the percentage of voters that they represent in our district. We drastically cut the representation of Unaffiliateds represented in the poll by 9 pps (which surely cut our potential results by at least a few points). The Party demographics in our sample are:

Democrats 57%
Republicans 26%
Unaffiliateds 17%

Thus, we gave Price a HUGE boost in this poll that will surely not reflect the percentage of voters who are Democrats on November 4. At max, Democrats will comprise half of the total voters on Election Day. There is simply no way to argue that we didn't do Price a big favor in this poll.

* Despite this, Price got a result LESS THAN THE PERCENTAGE OF DEMOCRATS IN THE POLL! We got a result FIVE POINTS HIGHER THAN THE PERCENTAGE OF REPUBLICANS IN THE POLL!

* Furthermore, with Price's base boosted significantly in the poll, 13% of the respondents in the poll are undecided.

So here we are with a poll in which Price's base is boosted significantly, and most likely quite unrealistically, while our base is shrunk; and this sitting incumbent who has been in Congress 20 of the last 22 years representing this district is not only running 9-10 percentage points behind what he typically gets in the 4th, but 13% of the respondents are undecided about this guy who has represented them for a third to half their lives. And this is less than two months out from Election Day! Heck, we gave his base an 11 point boost, and he DROPPED 9-10 points from his typical election percentage!

Folks, these numbers indicate that David Price is in trouble and that 4th District voters are thinking a little bit differently this year. I would say (although I haven't seen the crosstabs, so I can't make a very based assertion yet), that we gave Price 5-6 percentage points in the poll above what he's truly polling, and we cut 5-6 points off of what we're truly polling right now. While that's still not where we want to be, that puts for sure in the ballpark of a colossal upset.

What's so great about this poll also is that the methodology is super-tight. There were more than 1,000 respondents (as opposed to that ridiculous poll put out by Democracy Corps, which had a pitiful 86), so we're looking at a MoE of about 2-3%. We also stratified the sample by precinct, which gives one about as representative of a survey model as it gets for a Congressional campaign. (Or any political campaign, at that.) Furthermore, there's simply no argument that we manipulated the design of this poll for our benefit. Clearly, the design of this poll favors Price to a HUGE degree.

We've still got a ton of hard work to do to win. However, the numbers produced by this design show that it's doable.