I've Been Polled!

A good friend and fellow blogger emailed me to let me know that he got a phone survey last night asking for opinions on the 4th District candidates. Some of the names are people who have declared, some have not. Polls are an interesting phenomenon. We studied poll taking in grad school statistics. Depending on your desire, you can make the results look any way you want. It all comes down to how you ask the question. In politics, another use of polls is to advertise a candidate and get his or her name in people's minds. Especially this early when nobody has heard of most of the candidates. You can ask a question like "Tell me your opinion of the following people; Joe Smith, Ann Jones, MARK FORSYTHE, Sue Adams...." The idea is to call back in a few weeks and ask again, this time maybe changing some of the names but making sure MARK FORSYTHE is among them. Now the voter has heard the name twice. At least subconsciously your candidate has name recognition with that voter. Sneaky! I'm not doing any polling. Number one it costs money which I don't have a lot of, and number two it doesn't really fit with my campaign strategy which basically involves darkening every doorway of every 4th District voter and personally asking for their vote. That's only going to cost me some shoe leather! So if you get a call asking your opinion on 4th District candidates, make sure you score me super high and everyone else super low. That will skew their data. Trust me, statisticians hate that.