Gmail - [DK] Fwd: New Civil Beat poll in the Hawaii Senate race

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David Nir <davidnyc@gmail.com>

[DK] Fwd: New Civil Beat poll in the Hawaii Senate race
David Nir <davidnyc@gmail.com> To: David Nir <davidnir@dailykos.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------From: Matt Canter <canter@dscc.org> Date: Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 12:06 PM Subject: New Civil Beat poll in the Hawaii Senate race To: Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 7:39 PM

It's troubling that Civil Beat's automated poll was conducted by the very same pollster who also conducts polls directly for Ed Case's Senate campaign, despite the obvious conflict of interest this poses. The Hirono campaigns own polling of actual likely Democratic primary voters shows Ed Case losing to Mazie Hirono by eighteen points -- and given Mazies record in opposing George W. Bush's Iraq War and opposing Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, this isn't a surprise. Please see the memo below from pollster Pete Brodnitz outline problems with the polls methodology.

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Gmail - [DK] Fwd: New Civil Beat poll in the Hawaii Senate race

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To:

Hirono for Senate

From: Pete Brodnitz, BSG Date: January 30, 2012 Re: New Civil Beat poll in the Hawaii Senate race

Civil Beat just released a new survey conducted by the same firm that Ed Case is using for his current Senate campaign Merriman River Group despite the clear conflict of interest.

In addition, there are many reasons to be skeptical of the findings of this survey. The methodology of the poll is unclear. It was an automated call that does not use live callers but little is clear beyond that. Some specific concerns include the following;

This is apparently not a poll of primary voters. It is a poll of all likely voters.

The methodology does not say if those polled were registered voters. This is a key weakness in MRGs last poll of the Hawaii electorate when even Cases pollster admitted that people tend to exaggerate their likelihood of voting. Without evidence otherwise, we have to assume that there was no effort to limit the poll to registered voters and any relation between someone taking the poll and a Hawaii voter is coincidental.

MRG did not release how they qualified people to participate in the poll or show the screening questions so we are left to guess. They say the sample represents likely voters but do not say likely primary voters. Based on what they report we cannot even assume that this is a poll of Democratic primary voters.

Civil Beat released some cross-tabs, so we know that the poll included Republicans but they did not reveal what percentage of respondents are Republicans, Democrats or Independent. We also do not know any of the other survey demographics, such as percentage of voters by ethnicity or gender. This is significant when the poll purports to predict the result of the Democratic primary election but where one in five Case voters says they are Republican.

MRG reports that 20% of Ed Cases votes come from voters who said they were Republicans. According to CNNs exit polls, 20% of the electorate was Republican in the 2008 and 2010 general elections. Its highly unlikely that Ed Cases voters look like what a likely Hawaii primary voter universe

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Gmail - [DK] Fwd: New Civil Beat poll in the Hawaii Senate race

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will be. Cases result in the poll is built on this Republican tilt, so once the overall universe starts to resemble a more Democratic universe, Cases standing crumbles quickly.

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