Friday, April 20, 2012

Math and Polls

Kathleen G Kane, one of the Democratic candidates for Attorney General, released a poll today.  John Micek posted the full poll memo on his Capitol Ideas blog.  It doesn't have cross tabs so I can't drill down very far, but there are some interesting points.  The Kane campaign says the poll puts her ahead 42% to 33% (as reported by politicspa).  Math is not my strong suit but I'm not sure where those numbers come from.  Kane is listed as having a very favorable rating of 30%, her primary opponent Patrick Murphy 33%, for favorable it is 24% for Kane and 25% for Murphy.  That doesn't add up to 42/33 to me. 

The poll was a robocall poll, with recorded questions not live operators.  The poll memo states that only home phones were called, so those with only a cell phone would not be included.  It also states that results for the over 55 age range was overrepresented.  I hope they all have photo ids. 

1 comment:

AboveAvgJane said...

Note from Adam Lang (posted with permission):

I was reading my RSS feeds and saw your Kane post. Likely what is taking place is that it is from different questions. A good pollster will ask direct favorable/unfavorable of people. Then, they will ask the matchup questions.

That way you can infer why you may be getting votes. You may find out voters think you are awful, but not as awful as the the other person. Or you may find out the voters genuinely like you and that is why.

It helps campaigns focus on where they need to adjust/attack the image of the candidate or opposition.