2009 December

Grim Poll Numbers Continue for Lincoln

In what has become a familiar refrain, the latest numbers on the 2010 U.S. Senate race in Arkansas continue to show Sen. Blanche Lincoln faring poorly. Survey results released today by Rasmussen show Lincoln trailing in head-to-head match-ups against Republicans Gilbert Baker, Curtis Coleman, Tom Cox and Kim Hendren.

Rasmussen also shows that Arkansas voters’ enthusiasm for the health care reform proposals coming out of Washington D.C. are tepid. Full report over here if you feel like going to pick over the whole thing in detail, or you can just be like me and look at the headline and move on, because there’s been entirely too many damn polls already and we’ve still got 11 months of this to go.

And it probably doesn’t help matters for Lincoln much when former Democratic presidential hopeful and national committee chair Howard Dean goes on MSNBC and talks up a potential primary challenge to the state’s senior senator. Et tu, Howard?:

Yeah, that probably doesn’t help much.

Premature Evaluation: Or, Why Internet Polls Aren’t Worth the Paper They Aren’t Even Printed On

As a State Senate candidate, I’ve recently been the subject of a couple of “Internet polls,” in which website visitors are asked to vote for rival candidates. Even to discuss an Internet poll probably grants it too much importance, because there is no relation between actual voter behavior and an Internet poll.

After all, these were polls in which people from outside my district and minors could vote; perhaps more relevantly, someone technologically sophisticated types (which excludes me) might be able to vote multiple times from the same computer — not exactly a scientific gauge of public opinion.

Let’s look more closely at one of these polls. About a month ago, Whit Jones, proprietor of the insidesaline.com news site, polled his readers about the 2010 Senate race in District 22, which included me, my GOP primary opponent Jeremy Hutchinson and Democratic Rep. Dawn Creekmore. When I heard about this poll, I decided to vote once and then focus on more important things in my life: that is, everything else in the universe.

Regrettably, a supporter of mine soon brought to my attention that Hutchinson was accusing me of “robo-voting” in the poll. (Hutchinson made the same accusation in the previous Internet poll that he and I were subjected to; I assume “robo-voting” has something to do with using a computer program that repeatedly casts votes.) I immediately checked the poll, looking forward to an incredibly lopsided vote total in my favor.

[Read more...]