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Monday: There they go again...
posted at 2007-12-10 23:57 | Last modified 2007-12-12 00:10
Today's installment of the Great '08 Dem Skirmish:
FOP (Friend of Parton)?
Perdue campaign spokesman David Kochman tried to pin the Randy Parton debacle on Richard Moore.
As Treasurer, Moore chairs the Local Government Commission, a board within the Treasurer’s Department that oversees fiscal controls on local expenditures of state dollars. Moore and the rest of the commission voted early this year to approve the Parton Theater project - despite, Kochman says, reports that showed it might not live up to its billing.
After that, Kochman says, Moore held a fundraiser up in Roanoke Rapids this summer with some of the theater's key local sponsors, adding more than 13K to his campaign coffers.
Whether there's any connection is debatable, of course. But the Carolina Journal’s Don Carrington has been skeptical about Parton and the LGC for a while now. More of his coverage here.
Right back atcha...
Moore campaign spokesman Jay Reiff responded by releasing new internal poll numbers showing Moore may be closing Perdue’s gap. Reiff offers this explanation as to why their own numbers are more reliable than other polls.
As usual, that may not be the whole picture. When it comes to polls, it's "caveat lector."
- The first thing to remember when you read a poll is that if the given margin of error for a candidate's rating is 3.5%, then the operational margin of error for the spread is 7%. Why? Because *both* numbers could be off by 3.5 – so if the top’s 3.5 higher, and the bottom’s 3.5 lower, then the real gray area adds up to 7 percent.
That fact cancels out most of this poll, and a lot of others, too - like, say, the latest AP poll, where a ten-point MOE spread puts Clinton, Obama, and Edwards in a statistical dead heat in Iowa and South Carolina. That's here.
- Second, consider the source. Although Benenson is one of the better internal pollsters out there, no one gets rich by delivering strictly dismal data. Knowing how to find a silver lining in the numbers is, well, worth a lot of silver.
- Third, the absence of key details is a warning sign. A credible poll should include cross-tabs, methodology (like name-ordering, which matters), and some indication of whether candidates’ current titles were used (which also matters – a lot). This one has none of the above.
Still, caveats aside, the polling is interesting. While the shorter-term changes in the spread (3/07 to present) fall within the operational margin of error, the longer-term changes (8/05 to present) show Moore making more progress than Perdue. (Good to know they've been polling since 8/05, too.) Granted, she was ahead to begin with. But it’s still intriguing – especially the spread on the result from voters who say they’re familiar with both candidates. The polling memo’s here.
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