Perhaps Wellstone's lead in the polls is an abberation after all. None other than the sponsor of the Zogby poll himself, John Zogby, says that if the election were held today Norm Coleman would beat Paul Wellstone. As quoted in the Washington Times:
"If the election were held today, the Republicans would pick up Missouri, South Dakota and Minnesota," Mr. Zogby said. [In Minnesota] Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone — who trailed by 6 percentage points in the Zogby poll last month — shows a 9-point lead over Republican Norm Coleman, the former St. Paul mayor. Mr. Zogby stands by his latest poll but still thinks Mr. Coleman has the edge because "only 45 percent [of respondents] say Wellstone deserves re-election. That number and the fact that less than 50 percent say they will vote for him is bad news for any incumbent. Voters are saying they want someone new in the Senate, and the burden on Coleman now is to show he is the new someone they want," Mr. Zogby said.
Now that's getting behind the music on polling results. He's predicting the opposite result of the horserace question (one showing a statistically significant difference no less), based on an understanding of the context and the backgrounding data. As someone in the business of data interpretation myself, I can testify that's a steely-eyed analysis, taken to a level not usually seen in the biz. And it's a brave stance too, given the public nature of his reports and the high stakes risk of being proven wrong. His sophisticated analysis and subtle interpretation will likely be misinterpretated by many (like me?) and he'll be easy to dismiss as unreliable by those paying only superficial attention to these results and his comments. "Those" being the likes Don Shelby, Paul Magers, and whoever anchors at Channel 5 these days (Barry ZeVan? Russel Schimooka? Sunny Haus?). By the way, Zogby is a self professed Democrat, yet both parties have availed themselves of his services, he's that good.
No comments:
Post a Comment