AN INSTITUTION’S ARBITRARY GUIDELINES AND USE OF POLLING ARE UNRELIABLE AND BIASED AND ARE NOT A LEGAL MEANS TO EXCLUDE CANDIDATES WITHIN A POLITICAL RACE.

Maryland media and 501c3 organizations are using the wording of this Supreme Court decision in their language in guidelines that allow them to be selective and arbitrary.  The important thing to remember is the case above involved a third party and its candidate……not individual primary races within the same party.  When Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland is told I am not viable, or I am not one of the major party candidates having strong public support…..this language comes from the ruling above and has nothing to do with the Democratic Primary for Governor of Maryland.  To define someone ‘not viable’ while willfully keeping that candidate from any media exposure of candidate or platform and from polling instruments is unacceptable.  An election is about the public’s decision as to what platform and candidate they want to support and allowing the public to become informed on all candidates and platforms in a single race is critical.  I contend that the guidelines Maryland institutions craft for these events are not legal and if any part is ruled legal, polling is too arbitrary to be one of the guidelines used.



  On several occasions I was told Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland was excluded because of polling guidelines for organizations and events.  The University of Maryland College Park told me their guidelines were 15% polling needed to participate.  The Maryland League of Women Voters said their guidelines required 10% polling to participate.  By the time I went to Maryland Public Television----the polling guidelines were then down to 5% because none of the candidates in either political party were polling.



Each time I was given these polling requirements, there were candidates in all of these forums failing to meet these some or all of these polling requirements and the fact that Cindy Walsh for Governor was not represented in these polls done for the Maryland governor's race shows no way for me to have had polling numbers.  Each time I was told the guideline was campaign contributions there were candidates in these forums/debates not garnering campaign funding support.  So, the entire process was built around the desire to use arbitrary guidelines to keep certain candidates out of these large and important forums/debates.  As you see below, even the polling information towards the end becomes suspect as ever higher percentages of margin of error had to be used to get many of these candidates to even poll.

My campaign will subpoena the polls taken on this governor's race to review the veracity and legitimacy of poll procedures.

Imagine if with the poll below Cindy Walsh had been one of the choices.  Would that have changed the undecided?  Even the second poll done later in the primary using higher margins of error to boost polling results for candidates had a sizable number of undecided -----could that be Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland?  The attempts by pollsters confronted by my campaign to define selective polling as random polling is not correct.  Poll size matters when these numbers are so low and we all know that calling 2,000 registered voters is only a matter of a handful of people working for a few hours so getting the best results is not financially prohibitive.

In this Maryland governor's race it is clear that the exclusion has only to do with a candidate's platform.  The democratic candidates excluded have a distinctly different set of policy stances than those championed.  Cindy Walsh is excluded because of her platform.

When does ‘undecided’ become all of the other candidates left off of the poll?  We see here that many of the candidates were not breaking the 15% polling guideline; the 10% polling or in some cases even the 5% polling guidelines but all these candidates were in the media and in all forums and debates-----except Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland.  The pollsters were claiming apathy with the candidates.  Whether selective sampling or automated calling, the polling parameters are not offering the best picture and all of this weighs heavily on a candidate deemed unviable by these guidelines.

 

Undecided voters dominate in new gubernatorial poll

April 23, 2014|By Michael Dresser

“Undecided” continues to hold a commanding lead in both the Democratic and Republican primary races for governor, according to a new poll released Wednesday by St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

The poll, an inaugural venture by the Southern Maryland college’s political science department, shows little movement in the race since previous  surveys. The results suggest  that voters have not tuned in to the June 24 primary contest.

Among the Democrats, the polls showed Lt. Gov. Anthony G.  Brown  with the support of 27 percent of  registered primary voters. Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and Del. Heather R. Mizeur of Montgomery County lagged behind at 11 percent and 8 percent respectively.

While Brown maintained a strong margin over his rivals, two Democrats said they were undecided for every one that backs the lieutenant governor in his bid to succeed term-limited Gov. Martin O’Malley.

The 54 percent undecided level on the Democratic side was eclipsed by the uncertainty among Republicans.  Almost seven in 10 said they had not made a choice.

 Among those that have picked a candidate, Larry Hogan, a former Ehrlich administration official and founder of the conservative group Change Maryland, led with 16 percent. Harford County Executive David R. Craig trailed with 8 percent.  The severely underfunded campaigns of Del. Ron George of Anne Arundel County and  Charles County business executive Charles Lollar were  stuck below 4 percent.

Susan Grogan, professor of political science at St. Mary’s, said she doesn’t see much excitement about the race among voters.

“I would suspect we’re going to have a very low turnout,” she said.

The poll strongly tracks previous surveys  of the race and shows little sign that any candidate is gaining significant ground. For instance, a poll released by The Baltimore Sun in February showed Brown with 35 percent, Gansler with 14 percent and Mizeur with 10 percent.  On the Republican side Hogan polled at 13 percent and Craig at 7 percent.

The methodologies of the two polls were significantly different. Unlike the St. Mary’s poll, The Sun's poll used live callers and concentrated on 500 likely voters rather than all registered voters. The college’s automated poll surveyed 954 registered voters and had a margin of error of 3.17 percentage points.




Here we have the typical poll for this Maryland governor’s race-----the same 3 candidates appear in every venue covering the primary.  Would anyone know there are other democratic candidates running?  Would it be assumed if they were not in all of the coverage those candidates were not viable?  Of course, that is why there is willful and deliberate exclusion.  Margin of Error goes up because polling numbers are so low.  This allows the polling numbers to swing by ever larger margins.


Washington Post Maryland poll: 2014 Governor's race, health care law

Brown leads Gansler, Mizeur in Md. Democratic governor's race
Q: (AMONG DEMOCRATS AND DEM-LEANING INDEPENDENTS) As you may know, the candidates in June's Democratic primary election for governor include (Anthony Brown), (Doug Gansler) and (Heather Mizeur). Suppose the election were held today, for whom would you vote? (Click 'detailed view' for results among registered and likely voters)


Registered Voters vs Likely Voters......5% ME for democrats   6.5% ME for republicans in first poll; 7% ME for democrats    11% for republicans in second poll.
_____________________________________________________________________



Eric Cantor's Pollster Tries to Explain Why His Survey Showed Cantor Up 34 Points

This was not the first time Cantor pollster John McLaughlin has been wrong.

•  

June 11, 2014  National Journal

Eric Cantor's pollster whiffed.

Less than a week before voters dumped the House majority leader, an internal poll for Cantor's campaign, trumpeted to the Washington Post, showed Cantor cruising to a 34-point victory in his primary. Instead, Cantor got crushed, losing by 10 percentage points.

How did Cantor's pollster, veteran Republican survey-taker John McLaughlin, get the historic race so terribly wrong?



First, let's look at the poll. The survey had Cantor ahead of his opponent, little-known professor David Brat, 62 percent to 28 percent, with 11 percent of voters undecided, according to the Post. It polled 400 likely Republican primary voters on May 27 and 28.

It was supposed to have had a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points. The error, of course, was far larger. Statistically, polls are expected to fall outside that margin of error on 1 in 20 surveys. But in the end, it undercounted Brat's support by about 27 percentage points and overestimated Cantor's by 17 points. The poll was widely mocked on Twitter.

In an email to National Journal, McLaughlin, whose firm has been paid nearly $75,000 by Cantor's campaign since 2013, offered several explanations: unexpectedly high turnout, last-minute Democratic meddling, and stinging late attacks on amnesty and immigration.

"Primary turnout was 45,000 2 years ago," McLaughlin wrote. "This time 65,000. This was an almost 50% increase in turnout."

Translation: McLaughlin's estimate of who was a "likely Republican" voter was way, way off the mark. But Cantor's total number of votes still shrank, even as the total number of primary voters went up dramatically in 2014. He secured 37,369 primary votes in 2012 and less than 29,000 this year, with 100 percent of precincts reporting.

Meanwhile, McLaughin wrote that "attacks on immigration and amnesty charges from the right in last week hurt."

Then McLaughlin cited the "Cooter" factor – the fact that former Rep. Ben Jones, a Georgia Democrat who played Cooter in The Dukes of Hazzard, had written an open letter urging Democrats to vote for Brat to help beat Cantor.

"Over the weekend Democrats like Ben Jones and liberal media were driving their Democratic voters on the internet into the open primary," McLaughlin wrote. "Eric got hit from right and left. In our polls two weeks out Eric was stronger with Republicans at 70% of the vote, but running under 50% among non Republicans."

"Untold story," McLaughlin continued, "is who were the new primary voters? They were probably not Republicans."

Another problem, unmentioned by McLaughlin in the email, was timing. The poll was conducted May 27 and 28 but leaked to the Post on June 6. The dynamics on the ground could well have shifted by then, but Team Cantor may have wanted to put on a happy face. They ended up with egg on it instead.

This was not McLaughlin's first out-of-whack-with-the-results poll. For instance, a 2013 McLaughlin survey showing Democrat Ed Markey nearly tied in his Massachusetts Senate race inspired California winemaker John Jordan to plunge $1.4 million of his own money into a super PAC backing Markey's opponent. Markey won by 10 percentage points.

David Nir of Daily Kos Elections compiled a list last year of inaccurate McLaughlin surveys. In October 2012, McLaughlin polls showed Mitt Romney winning in Colorado (by 4 points) and Virginia (by 7 points), even though Romney lost those states by 5 points and 4 points, respectively. In late October 2012, a McLaughlin poll in Rhode Island showed Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse up by only 8 points against his GOP challenger. Whitehouse won by 30.

Even that poll, though, was more accurate than his last one for Cantor.

 

 

This is an example of the kinds of polling used by media for results in political races and/or political issues.  Gonzales is a marketing corporation based in Annapolis and one can see the level of conflict of interest in providing polling information.  Are we selling a candidate or issue or are we asking the public for unbiased opinions?  Academic polls are generally done for no charge and offer more checks and balance on bias.  The American people are hearing over and over at all levels of government elections that the polls do not meet the actual voting result.

 

Gonzales Research conducts surveys of registered voters – nationally, statewide, and in local jurisdictions.  Each of the surveys listed here is in the public domain, but we ask that Gonzales Research & Marketing Strategies, Inc. of Annapolis be credited if any of the surveys are cited in a story or column.
Please select a category of Survey.

 

 

 

‘Since the 2012 election, much of the speculation about Gallup's miss has centered on the likely voter model the firm uses to select survey participants, a method it has applied with only minor modifications since the 1950s’.

 

Gallup Presidential Poll: How Did Brand-Name Firm Blow Election?

Posted: 03/08/2013 8:16 am EST  |  Updated: 03/08/2013 6:40 pm EST  Huffington Post

WASHINGTON -- Gallup, which has long touted itself as the most trusted survey brand in the world, is facing a crisis. If Barack Obama's reelection in November was widely considered a win for data crunchers, who had predicted the president's victory in the face of skeptical pundits, it was a black mark for Gallup, whose polls leading up to Election Day had given the edge to Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

Obama prevailed in the national popular vote by a nearly 4 percentage point margin. Gallup's final pre-election poll, however, showed Romney leading Obama 49 to 48 percent. And the firm's tracking surveys conducted earlier in October found Romney ahead by bigger margins, results that were consistently the most favorable to Romney among the national polls.

 

Since the election, the Gallup Poll's editor-in-chief, Frank Newport, has at times downplayed the significance of his firm's shortcomings. At a panel in November, he characterized Gallup's final pre-election poll as "in the range of where it ended up" and "within a point or two" of the final forecasts of other polls. But in late January, he announced that the company was conducting a "comprehensive review" of its polling methods.

There is a lot at stake in this review, which is being assisted by University of Michigan political scientist and highly respected survey methodologist Michael Traugott. Polling is a competitive business, and Gallup's value as a brand is tied directly to the accuracy of its results.

The firm's reputation had already taken a hit last summer when an investigation by The Huffington Post revealed that the way Gallup accounted for race led to an under-representation of non-whites in its samples and a consistent underestimation of Obama's job approval rating, prompting the firm to make changes in its methodology. (Since Gallup implemented those changes in October, the "house effect" in its measurement of Obama's job rating has significantly decreased.)

 

And in January, Gallup and USA Today ended their 20-year polling partnership. While both parties described the breakup as amicable, the pollster's misfire on the 2012 election loomed large in the background.

Over the years, Gallup's business has grown and evolved into much more than public opinion polling. The company currently describes itself primarily as a "performance management consulting firm," and the Gallup Poll is just one of its four divisions. Yet Gallup's reputation as the nation's premier public opinion pollster remains central to its business, helping it win millions of dollars in contracts with the federal government, for which the firm conducts research and collects data.

That portion of Gallup's business is coming under a different sort of pressure. In November, the Justice Department joined a whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former employee accusing the firm of overcharging taxpayers by at least $13 million in its federal contracts.

Despite the election results being hailed as a victory for pollsters generally, Gallup's shortcomings have also led some to question whether the methods of all national polling firms are outdated.

From the Obama campaign, which supplemented traditional polling methods with advanced data analytics drawn from public voting records, the criticism was more pointed. "We spent a whole bunch of time figuring out that American polling is broken," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told a post-election forum. The reelection team's internal numbers told a different story about trends in the fall and accurately forecast the outcome, leading Messina to argue that "most of the public polls you were seeing were completely ridiculous."

An assessment of Gallup's recent struggles shows that its problems measuring the electoral horse race in 2012 were more severe, but similar in nature, to those faced by many other media polls. The firm's internal review, therefore, offers Gallup a chance not only to identify what went awry in 2012, but also to help the public understand how polling works -- and sometimes doesn't -- in the current era. In particular, the review could help shed light on two major problem areas for polling firms today: how they treat their "likely voter" models and how they draw their samples from the general population.

Newport told HuffPost that although the "major purpose" of Gallup's review is to "focus on our practices and procedures," it may also "shed some light on factors operative in this election which may have affected pre-election polls more generally."

Gallup has a chance both to reassert its position at the top of the field and to restore faith in all similar national polls -- if it confronts this review with transparency and seriousness of purpose.

CHOOSING 'LIKELY VOTERS'

Since the 2012 election, much of the speculation about Gallup's miss has centered on the likely voter model the firm uses to select survey participants, a method it has applied with only minor modifications since the 1950s.

The basic idea is straightforward: Gallup uses answers to survey questions to identify the adult respondents who seem most likely to vote. In practice, that means asking a series of questions about voter registration, intent to vote, past voting, interest in the campaign and knowledge of voting procedures -- all characteristics that typically correlate with a greater likelihood of actually casting a ballot -- and combining responses to those questions into a seven-point scale. Those respondents who score highest on the scale are classified as "likely voters," after Gallup makes a judgment call about its cutoff point -- that is, the percentage of adults that best matches the probable level of voter turnout.

Until the fall of an election year, most national pollsters choose to report their survey results for the larger population of self-described registered voters. But in the final weeks of the campaign, Gallup and others shift to the narrower segment of likely voters, which has typically made their estimates more accurate by filtering out registered voters who aren't likely to go to the polls on Election Day.

What went wrong in 2012? One possibility is that Gallup set its cutoff point too low, including too few people. While Gallup's final poll gave Romney a 1 point edge among likely voters, the results from the same poll for all registered voters gave Obama a 3 point lead (49 to 46 percent), very close to the president's actual margin of victory of 3.9 points.

Gallup was not alone on this score. Of five other national pollsters that reported results for both likely and registered voters on their final surveys, only the Pew Research Center made its results more accurate by narrowing from registered to likely voters. The average of all six pollsters had the final Obama lead almost exactly right among registered voters (3.7 percentage points), but too close (0.8 percentage points) among likely voters.

 

One theory as to why the pool of self-described registered voters so closely resembled the actual electorate is that many non-likely voters were, in effect, already screening themselves out -- by opting out of the survey. As the Pew Research Center reported in May 2012, actual voters are already more likely to respond to its surveys, while non-voters are more likely to hang up. "This pattern," Pew wrote, "has led pollsters to adopt methods to correct for the possible over-representation of voters in their samples."

In the case of Pew Research, one such correction is setting the cutoff used to determine likely voters at a slightly higher level than the turnout Pew actually expects. In 2012, for example, the pollster expected a 58 percent turnout among adults, but set the cutoff level at 63 percent of adult respondents to compensate for the presumed non-response bias.

While Gallup has detailed the workings of its likely voter model, the firm has not yet published information about either the cutoff percentage it used or the response rates achieved by its surveys in 2012. A complete review, made public, could shed light on this issue.

Another source of criticism of Gallup's likely voter model is its reliance on self-reported interest in the election. In a review conducted after the 2012 election, Republican pollster Bill McInturff shared data from a survey his company conducted in California in 2010. It found that while those who rated their interest in the election the highest were the most likely to vote, roughly 40 percent of those with lower reported interest -- those who rated their interest as four or lower on a 10-point scale -- still voted in the 2010 elections.

Perhaps more to the point: McInturff reported that among respondents who actually voted from his 2010 surveys in California, older and white voters expressed much greater interest in the election than younger and non-white voters.

"It is clear, a traditional Likely Voter Model based only on self-described interest and self-described likelihood to vote missed the scope of the turnout of 18-29 year olds and Latinos in 2012," McInturff wrote.

Interest in the campaign is just one of seven turnout indicators that Gallup uses in its model, and pollsters have long understood that although their likely voter models typically make their results more accurate, they often misclassify whether individual voters will or will not vote. But a more complete investigation based on Gallup's extensive data would provide more clues about why its likely voter model had Romney ahead, as well as why other pollsters understated Obama's margin of victory to a lesser degree.

LANDLINES AND CELL PHONES

There is one important methodological difference between Gallup and other pollsters that nearly everyone missed in 2012 and that may explain -- at least in part -- why Gallup's numbers went wrong. It involves a significant change in the way Gallup draws its samples, first implemented in April 2011, that no other national polling firm has yet adopted.

The change is part of a larger story about the immense challenges now facing sampling procedures that have been standard for decades. Since news organizations first started conducting polls via telephone in the late 1960s and early 1970s, their samples have typically been drawn using a method known as "random digit dialing" (RDD).

The idea is to start with a random sample of telephone number prefixes or "exchanges" (the 555 in 202-555-1212) and then, for each selected prefix, randomly generate the last four digits to form a complete number. (The process is more complex in actual practice, but that's the basic gist.)

The rationale for RDD is that it creates random samples of all working phone numbers, both listed and unlisted. By contrast, samples drawn from published directories (i.e., the white pages) miss a significant chunk of households with unlisted numbers. As of 2011, 45 percent of U.S. households were not included in published phone directories, according to the sampling vendor Survey Sampling International.

The RDD sampling procedure works similarly for mobile phones, since most mobile numbers are assigned to exchanges reserved for that purpose. So most national media polls now combine two RDD samples, one of landline phones and a second of cell phones.

The rapidly changing patterns in phone use in recent decades have also increased pollster costs. RDD sampling has always been inefficient, because some portion of the randomly generated numbers are inevitably non-working, and the process of accurately sorting out the live numbers is time-consuming and expensive. Over the years, however, the greater cost of polling by cell phone and a steady decline in the efficiency of the sampling process have combined to make traditional RDD methods significantly more expensive.

Along the way, pollsters have nibbled around the edges of their RDD methods in search of acceptable tweaks that might hold down costs. Prominent national media pollsters have typically been cautious about more radical changes. Most, for example, eschew the use of so-called predictive dialing -- the annoying technology that only connects a live interviewer once the respondent picks up the phone and says "hello" -- because of concerns that potential respondents will just hang up. (You've likely experienced such annoyance yourself if you've ever answered your phone and then waited for a telemarketer or automated voice to come on the line.)

In recent years, however, a team of survey researchers at the University of Virginia (UVA) noticed a potentially cost-cutting silver lining in the massive growth of cell phone usage: Most of the Americans with unlisted landline numbers now have mobile phone service. So it may be possible, at least in theory, to reach virtually all adults with a combination of RDD samples of mobile phones and of listed landline phones.

Moving from randomly generated numbers to listed numbers would save pollsters time and money, since most calls to landlines would reach live numbers and the callers would spend far less time dialing non-working numbers that ring endlessly without answer.

As of 2006, the UVA researchers found that this combination could theoretically reach 86 percent of U.S. adults, but the rapid growth of cell phone usage has increased that number significantly. Two years later, they conducted field tests showing this combined sampling method could theoretically reach all but 1 to 2 percent of adults in three counties in Virginia.

The study caught the attention of the methodologists at Gallup, whose investment in standard RDD interviewing is substantial. Since early 2008, Gallup has partnered with the "global well-being company" Healthways to conduct the Gallup Daily, a tracking survey of 3,500 adults that encompasses both political questions like presidential job approval and the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. The survey launched using the increasingly expensive combination of RDD calls to mobile and listed and unlisted landline phones. Healthways has committed to fund the project for 25 years.

In April 2011, however, Gallup began drawing the landline portion of its samples for the Gallup Daily and other surveys from phone numbers listed in electronic directories. At the time, the only indication of a change was a two-sentence description that began appearing in the methodology blurb at the bottom of articles on Gallup.com: "Landline telephone numbers are chosen at random among listed telephone numbers. Cell phones numbers are selected using random digit dial methods."

Newport, the Gallup editor-in-chief, told HuffPost that the switch was made after internal "analysis and pre-test research" confirmed the findings of the UVA study. "There were very few landline unlisteds who were landline only, 2-3 percent," he wrote via email, "and likely to decline in the future."

To make this new sampling method work, Gallup began "weighting" up a small percentage of respondents -- those interviewed by cell phone who say they also have an unlisted landline -- to compensate for the missing 2 to 3 percent of adults who are totally out of reach -- those with an unlisted landline and no cell phone. To accommodate this additional weighting, Gallup boosted the number of cell phone interviews from 20 to 40 percent of completed calls.

On its face, that compromise seems reasonable. But it requires Gallup to weight its data more heavily than other national pollsters.

That heavier weighting likely exacerbated a problem HuffPost identified in its June 2012 investigation of Gallup, which showed that the "trimming" of especially large weights explained why the firm consistently failed to match its own targets for race and Hispanic origin. The effort to reduce weighting is also partly why Gallup chose to increase the percentage of calls placed to cell phones again, in October 2012, to 50 percent -- a larger percentage than used by most other media pollsters last year. As Newport said at the time, the change would allow for smaller weights and thus "provide a more consistent match with weight targets."

MISSING THE UNLISTED

Does this aspect of Gallup's methodology explain why it showed a pronounced house effect late in the presidential race? "Our preliminary research on the election tracking," Newport said, "suggests that this did not have a significant impact on our election estimates."

Gallup has not publicly released any of the raw data it collected for pre-election surveys in October or November 2012. To try to check Newport's assertion, HuffPost reviewed survey data collected by the Democratic-sponsored polling organization Democracy Corps as part of a pre-election report on the importance of cell phone interviewing.

Like many other media pollsters, Democracy Corps called RDD samples of both cell phones and landlines, but its sample vendor indicated which of the selected numbers were also listed in published directories. This extra bit of information can help give us a sense of the degree to which missing unlisted-landline-only households might have affected Gallup's samples.

The following chart illustrates the most important tabulation from the Democracy Corps data. On the one hand, the households that Gallup misses altogether -- those with an unlisted landline and no cell phone -- supported Obama over Romney by a lopsided 22 point margin (58 to 36 percent). On the other hand, this subgroup is tiny, just 2 percent of all likely voters, and would have little effect on the overall vote estimate even if it were missed completely.

 


Although the Democracy Corps data generally back up Newport's assertion that listed directory sampling did not significantly impact Gallup's election numbers, he nonetheless confirmed that it is "one of the elements we are reviewing and one of several areas where we will be conducting additional experimental research."

And for good reason. Anything as unusual as Gallup's methodological change deserves a closer look, because any sample design that leaves people out is something that should be scrupulously examined.

"I'm glad that Gallup wants to help explain what happened and they're taking a rigorous approach to looking at their methods which are different than they had been," said Andrew Kohut, founding director of the Pew Research Center. "There's every reason to see if the changes in those methods have accounted for how their poll did."

But like other pollsters HuffPost interviewed for this story, Kohut questioned Gallup's assumptions and the added complexity of the weighting scheme required to compensate for the potentially missing respondents. "It's hard enough to take into account the right ratio between the people who are both from the cell and landline. Now you're adding another dimension, [which is] very complicating," he said.

At issue is not just the 2 to 3 percent whose only phone is an unlisted landline, but also the larger number with an unlisted landline and a cell phone who rarely or never answer calls from strangers on their cell phones. The Democracy Corps data indicate that those voters who said they used their unlisted landline for most calls were as heavily pro-Obama as those who had only an unlisted landline. Did Gallup's procedure account for bias against those dual users who are much easier to reach via landline?

Also, Gallup relies on its respondents to self-report their use of an unlisted landline. Some might not know whether their number is listed in a telephone directory. To what extent did Gallup test the accuracy of those self-reports?

Finally, even if the impact of the listed directory sampling is minor, it may have worked in concert with other small errors in Romney's favor to create Gallup's 2012 problems. All surveys are subject to small, random design errors that usually cancel each other out. It's when a series of small errors affect the data in the same direction that minor house effects can turn into significant errors.

TRANSPARENCY RENEWED?

Newport initially portrayed Gallup's post-election review as a routine examination, but his more recent announcement of Traugott's involvement and the comprehensive nature of the review suggests something less ordinary.

Traugott led an evaluation of polling misfires during the 2008 presidential primaries, which was undertaken by the American Association for Public Opinion Research and marked by its commitment to transparency. AAPOR asked the public pollsters involved to answer extensive questions about their methodologies and published their responses. Gallup was one of a handful of organizations that went the extra mile and provided Traugott's committee with the raw data gathered from individual respondents, along with permission to deposit those data in a publicly accessible archive.

That openness was consistent with Gallup's history. In 1967, founder George Gallup first proposed the "national standards group for polling" that became the National Council on Public Polls. Among other things, George Gallup wanted pollsters to commit to sharing "technical details that would help explain why polling results of one organization do not agree with those of another, when they differ." He also played a leading role in establishing the Roper Center Public Opinion Archives, where Gallup and other public pollsters have long deposited their raw data to be used in scholarly research and to provide a "public audit of polling data."

Kohut -- who began his career at Gallup and once served as its president -- underscored the continuing importance of transparency. Ordinary Americans may not "understand the ins and outs of [survey] methods," he said, but they need reassurance that differences between polls "are accounted for by methodological factors rather than based upon the political judgments of the people who run these polls."

Will Gallup's report on 2012 include a public release of the raw data from the final month of its presidential tracking poll? "We may certainly consider that," Newport said via email, noting that "we at Gallup will be writing up our conclusions and sharing them with interested parties."

Given the scrutiny that has fallen upon pollsters for last year's presidential predictions, let's hope the "interested parties" include all of us.

_____________________________________________________________________


 

St. Mary’s College performs what looks to be the most academic and reliable polling in the State of Maryland yet it too uses methods that diminish accuracy like automated calling and small cohorts for extremely low polling figures.  As you can see below, St. Mary’s does not post its polling model even as it says the information is coming so we do not know how they randomized, what the protocol for failed calling attempts was, etc.  The other polling agencies like Gonzalez, Sun, Washington Post use models that make polling data irrelevant.  The percentages that make it to media for each candidate always include those methods with higher margin of error and ‘likely’ voter cohorts.  Again, it is not cost or time that figures into these choices of polling methods because a handful of people working just a few hours can call 1,000 voters.  It is a willful and deliberate attempt to use polling data to manipulate the election process.

 

Welcome To INSIGHTS

 

The Maryland Poll or MPoll, our Blog INSIGHTS, and Hosted Blogs

Professor Susan Grogan

April’s MPoll results are in!

 Download Graphs of the MPOll‘s Results.

You are on the Welcome (Home) Page of INSIGHTS, The Maryland Poll’s  blog.   The Maryland Poll , a.k.a. the MPoll, was conceived from two years of research toward starting a public opinion polling research center within St. Mary’s College of Maryland’s Political Science Department.  My professional reasons were to develop a pedagogical model incorporating more technology and involving more public service in my political science classes as well as steering my own professional career in that direction.  (Personal reasons may have included a knee-jerk response to certain members in the House of the US Congress who absurdly continue to insist that ‘we don’t do science in political science.‘)

Much of our activity will involve gathering together public opinion data  from polls conducted within and about Maryland.  We will also conduct our own MPolls.  We conducted our first poll from April 10 – 13 and the results were published April 18, 2014.  Polls are planned for the fall semester during the Maryland 2014 Gubernatorial Election.

Thus, the project is multidimensional.  As mentioned, the MPoll will conduct polls.  INSIGHTS, MPoll’s blog, will gather polling data and will provide straightforward commentary as nonpartisan as is possible.  As another aspect of our public service mission, INSIGHTS will also publish background information on polling and how to interpret polling data.  The idea is that, in addition to professional commentary, INSIGHTS will offer the necessary background the layperson would need to analyze polling data.

We could say that commenting provides another useful measure of public opinion.  INSIGHTS as well as Hosted Blogs are open for comments that further the discussion by presenting a more diverse range of opinions and ideas about public opinion and political goings-on that affect or attempt to influence the opinions of persons residing in or near Maryland.  Most often, the primary demographic of concern will be eligible voters.

All comments will be moderated.  Not all comments will be accepted.  In most cases, it likely will be that we are too overwhelmed at the moment to respond but we also hope to maintain a reasonable level of decorum.

 

About Candidates v. Polls

Coming soon.  We should have content up by the end of January on most of this site.

Thank you for your patience.

About Interpreting Polls Coming soon.  We should have content up soon on most of this site.

Thank you for your patience.

About Polling Techniques Coming soon.  We should have content up soon on most of this site.

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As I show elsewhere in the evidence provided, the various polls greatly exaggerated the candidates favored to win.  When the public is shown these irrelevant stats it creates the apathy for voting for a candidate they would actually want.  Psychologically, it is known that voters tend to follow the front-runner and this is why the exaggerated figures for Brown, Gansler, and Mizeur were created with manipulated polling standards like margin of error and selected polling groups of ‘likely’ voters.  Can you imagine when voter turnout hits 10-20% how small and homogenous that polling pool of likely voters become?  Why would polls include all republican candidates even as they barely polled and not all of the democratic candidates?

The media identified the apathy of voters as ‘not caring’ but we know the apathy is from an inability to exact change to a system voters know is rigged.

 

Undecided voters dominate in new gubernatorial poll

April 23, 2014|By Michael Dresser  Baltimore Sun

 

The poll strongly tracks previous surveys of the race and shows little sign that any candidate is gaining significant ground. For instance, a poll released by The Baltimore Sun in February showed Brown with 35 percent, Gansler with 14 percent and Mizeur with 10 percent.  On the Republican side Hogan polled at 13 percent and Craig at 7 percent.

The methodologies of the two polls were significantly different. Unlike the St. Mary’s poll, The Sun's poll used live callers and concentrated on 500 likely voters rather than all registered voters. The college’s automated poll surveyed 954 registered voters and had a margin of error of 3.17 percentage points.

 

Look at this media representation of the Maryland democratic primary race for governor.  The polling numbers are so skewed it is a mockery of the election process.  Again, the use of likely voters, a subset so small as to be useless in attaining actual polling data.  Is it illegal for media and polling agencies to deliberately skew these polling data in a way that willfully and deliberately damages the campaign of other candidates?  Yes, it is.  It is also illegal for organizations participating in these election events to use these polling data everyone knows are skewed.  I can assure this court, Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland gave the larger venues participating in this primary election this information on polling as the primary progressed.  Allowing these polls saying Brown was polling at 46% of likely voters right before the primary election and ending with 12%  of registered democratic voters -----this is a crime.  It takes away all voter enthusiasm to participate and tells prospective candidates and those like me that this system is so corrupt you will not have a chance.

 

 

Maryland Politics

Lt. Gov. Brown holds commanding lead over Democratic rivals in Maryland governor’s race

•  
•  

From left, Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler, Del. Heather R. Mizeur (Montgomery) and Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, the Democratic candidates for governor of Maryland. (Matt Mcclain/AP)

By John Wagner and Peyton M. Craighill June 10   Washington Post

Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown holds a commanding lead over his Democratic rivals for governor, according to a new Washington Post poll, two weeks before a primary election that most voters are not following closely and that is likely to attract a low turnout.

Though nearly half of likely voters say they could still change their minds, the poll found backing for Brown across a broad demographic range — and deep support among fellow African Americans — and showed that Brown voters are firmer in their allegiance than those siding with the other candidates. With scant evidence that attacks on Brown’s management skills, particularly his handling of the state’s health insurance exchange, have damaged him, the poll shows no obvious path to victory for the other Democratic hopefuls in the June 24 primary.

Statewide, 46 percent of likely Democratic voters support Brown, while 23 percent back Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and 16 percent support Del. Heather R. Mizeur (Montgomery), according to the poll.

Analysts said Brown’s lead is formidable in the race, in which early voting starts Thursday.

“Absent a gigantic mistake from the Brown campaign, this is probably over,” said Donald F. Norris, chairman of the public policy department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. “I think the only strategy left for a candidate in Gansler’s situation is to attack, attack, attack, and that’s likely to backfire.”



If Gansler is too aggressive, Norris reasoned, he could strike voters as desperate and wind up driving voters to Mizeur as an alternative.

 

 

Here's the breakdown of votes in the primary as of 2:26 a.m. Wednesday, according to the Maryland Board of Elections, with 1982 of 1988 precincts reporting:

Republican
Larry Hogan/Boyd Rutherford: 43.01 percent
David Craig/Jeannie Haddaway: 29.12 percent
Charles Lollar/Ken Timmerman: 15.51 percent
Ronald George/Shelley Aloi: 12.36 percent

Democrat
Anthony Brown/Ken Ulman: 51.29 percent
Doug Gansler/Jolene Ivey: 24.23 percent
Heather Mizeur/Delman Coates: 21.71 percent
Cindy Walsh/Mary Elizabeth Wingate-Pennacchia: 1.4 percent
Charles Smith/Clarence Tucker: 0.72 percent
Ralph Jaffe/Freda Jaffe: 0.65 percent

The following results are from early voting (June 12 to 19), as reported by the Maryland Board of Elections.

Democrat
Anthony Brown/Ken Ulman: 57.71 percent
Doug Gansler/Jolene Ivey: 20.82 percent
Heather Mizeur/Delman Coates: 19.4 percent
Cindy Walsh/Mary Elizabeth Wingate-Pennacchia: 1.05 percent
Ralph Jaffe/Freda Jaffe: 0.51 percent
Charles Smith/Clarence Tucker: 0.51 percent

Republican
Larry Hogan/Boyd Rutherford: 42.79 percent
David Craig/Jeannie Haddaway: 31.95 percent
Charles Lollar/Ken Timmerman: 13.74 percent
Ronald George/Shelley Aloi: 11.53 percent

If you look at all of the election result coverage it almost always refers to the percentage won of votes casted and not percentage of total registered voters.  You see below the extremely low percentage of registered voters who actually voted.  As the group at St. Mary’s College stated in the article on polling…..the problem is the failure to educate the voters.  This speaks to the inclusion of all candidates and platforms and it speaks to the election venues available to the citizens of Maryland.  The fact that there is not a Maryland State election platform that allows all candidates access to forums and debates all over the state shows the capture of this election system.  The fact that organizations tasked with the mission of free and fair election oversight, like the Maryland League of Women Voters, use the same arbitrary polling guidelines and front-runner status and openly work to make sure a candidate with a certain platform does not have videotaped exposure on its website shows a captured election system.  When the University of Maryland is telling me it uses a 15% polling threshold and Maryland Public Television and Maryland League of Women Voters uses 10% and they all are allowing all republican candidates mostly polling lower than these thresholds in all forum events while excluding democratic candidates because of platform-----you have a captured election system.  As I pointed out, the private non-profits that are taking over this duty all express prejudice and as I have proven, do it in ways that are illegal and violate election law.  The law states that the voters have the right to go to the polls with freedom and intellect to participate as an educated electorate.  Denying viable candidates the right to exposure and access to major forums and debates whether on media or tied to a 501c3 event willfully and deliberately damages a candidate’s campaign and works to keep people from this ballot intellect.

I ask that you look as well at the final percentages of registered voters for each candidate to see how this actual count compares with the polling numbers given to us all through the governor’s race.  Don’t forget that we just came through the most media campaign advertisement blitz of the primary election period so these percentages would be a peak.  You will notice that these percentages are closer to the St Mary’s poll in April where most of the candidates barely broke 10% and many were around 5%.  These are the polling numbers used by major venues to exclude Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland and the arbitrary nature is obvious.  I would say that it is obvious as well that some polling agencies provided polling numbers that were so inflated and unreal as to set the stage for some candidates being labelled front-runners and meeting guidelines.  Again, this kind of polling is so irrelevant and excludes candidates who are relegated to the ‘undecided’ and ‘other’ category that it fails to meet the Supreme Court ruling about identifying candidates as viable or strongly supported by the public.

  One cannot believe the Maryland Elections Board has no one on staff with a rudimentary understanding of polling methods and a history of Maryland elections to not have seen this trend and acted to eliminate this illegal bias.

2014 Primary Election Results - Maryland Governor

UPDATED 2:22 PM EDT Jun 23, 2014

 

Governor - Dem Primary

June 25, 2014 - 08:26AM ET

Maryland - 2033 of 2033 Precincts Reporting - 100%

 


Name

Party

Votes

Vote %



Brown, Anthony

Dem

235,974

51%


Gansler, Douglas

Dem

111,444

24%


Mizeur, Heather

Dem

99,844

22%


Walsh, Cindy

Dem

6,441

1%


Smith, Charles

Dem

3,296

1%


Jaffe, Ralph

Dem

2,995

1%





 

 

Governor - GOP Primary

June 25, 2014 - 08:26AM ET

Maryland - 2033 of 2033 Precincts Reporting - 100%

 


Name

Party

Votes

Vote %



Hogan, Larry

GOP

89,113

43%


Craig, David

GOP

60,357

29%


Lollar, Charles

GOP

32,155

16%


George, Ron

GOP

25,613

12%


Read more: http://www.wbaltv.com/politics/2014-primary-election-results-maryland-governor/26550226#ixzz35eavyG7j

Brown ---------236,000 of 2,000,000 registered democratic voters =  12% of the vote

Gansler ------- 111,500 of 2,000,000 registered democratic voters =  6% of the vote

Mizeur -------  100,000 of 2,000,000 registered democratic voters =   5% of the vote     

Walsh -------  6,500 of 2,000,000 registered democratic voters =  1% of the vote

 

23% of registered democrats voted

 

 

Hogan ------  89,000 of 1,000,000 registered republican voters =  9% of the vote

Craig ------- 60,500 of 1,000,000 registered republican voters =  6% of the vote

Lollar ------ 32,000 of 1,000,000 registered republican voters =  3% of the vote

George ----- 26,000 of 1,000,000 registered republican voters =   3% of the vote

 

21% of registered republicans voted.

 

Please look at these final election results with the actual percentage of registered voters per candidate to see the 12% of voters for Brown to see these figures have been super-sized from the start.  There is no reasonable explanation that after the last few weeks of concentrated campaign advertisement and after several months of media saturation of this one candidate that he only garners 12% of registered democratic voters ----other than democratic voters did not want this candidate that is now declared primary winner with 12% of the voters.  Meanwhile, Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland is not far behind with 1% of the vote and completely censured in the media and major forum and debate venues.

The expedited nature of this election process denies me the ability to subpoena all of these polling tools to verify the voracity of methods.  I would as well have used the subpoena to have an official set of guidelines for forums and debates from the institutions I have quoted.  I feel confident because of the irrelevant methods we do see and the extreme inflation of the polls to the reality of the election that I have proven the invalidity of polling as a method of exclusion and identifying a candidate as viable, a front-runner, or having strong public support.  Everyone in this primary race knew these polling figures and methods allowed this inflation of percentages as did the organizations using polling to exclude arbitrarily.  As the final results show only one candidate meets the 10% polling requirement of Maryland Public Television and Maryland League of Women Voters and none meet the polling requirement of University of Maryland’s 15% polling.  If this court allows these polling agencies to arbitrarily inflate results to effect the conduct of these elections, the election process in Maryland will remain corrupt and disillusioned voters left with no government agency protecting free and fair elections.

The court must recognize the systemic fraud and corruption in this democratic primary system at all levels of operation and rule this primary election result invalid and recognize that replicating the primary with the system without reform would be impossible.  I will be requesting in my Federal Court lawsuit against the defendants listed that the Federal government place an oversight decree on Maryland Elections Board and the Maryland Democratic Party and monitor the behavior of elections in the state over several election periods until all entities involved in the election process understand and develop good standards of operation while participating in elections.  The candidates in the democratic primary are all guilty of Federal election law and as such will be tried under felony indictment.  This should give this Maryland Circuit Court further reason to declare this democratic primary void with no second primary.

Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland did all that was possible to identify, report, mitigate, and seek resolution to the violations listed in this complaint.  I should not be denied my place in this election for governor.  Since I had the ability in February 2014 to register as a general election candidate for governor with the Green Party, I request that this be allowed now by suspending this one time the requirement to file for this general election status by February 2104.  I request the court assess financial penalty to those government agencies assigned to protect elections and my rights as a candidate to include candidate filing fees for myself and my Lt Governor and for the costs of electioneering over the course of several months.


 

 

Polls Potential Democratic primary match-ups [hide]Primary trial heats for 2014 gubernatorial race

Poll

Anthony Brown

Doug Gansler

Heather Mizeur

Undecided

Margin of Error

Sample Size









Brown-Ulman Internal Poll conducted by Garin-Hart-Yang
(September 11-15, 2013)

43%

21%

5%

31%

+/-4.0

608









Gonzales Research/Marketing Strategies Poll
(October 1-14, 2013)

41%

21%

5%

33%

+/--

403









Baltimore Sun Poll
(February 8-12, 2014)

35%

14%

10%

40%

+/-4.4

500









Washington Post Poll
(February 13-16, 2014)

32%

15%

9%

39%

+/-3.5

1,002









The Maryland Poll
(April 10-13, 2014)

27%

11%

8%

54%

+/-3.17

954









WPA Opinion Research
(May 6-7,2014)

34%

20%

7%

40%

+/-4.9

400










AVERAGES

35.33%

17%

7.33%

39.5%

+/-1.86

644.5














Note: The polls above may not reflect all polls that have been conducted in this race. Those displayed are a random sampling chosen by Ballotpedia staff. If you would like to nominate another poll for inclusion in the table, send an email to editor@ballotpedia.org