Thursday, April 13, 2006

Breaking: Ohio 13th Poll

WKYC has a new poll, just up, including numbers on the OH-13 race (hat tip to k-pho):

If the Democratic Primary were today, and you were standing in the voting booth right now, who would you vote for? Capri Cafaro? Bill Grace? Gary Kucinich? Tom Sawyer? Betty Sutton? Or some other candidate?

21% Cafaro
10% Grace
15% Kucinich
24% Sawyer
13% Sutton
10% Other
8% Undecided

Asked of 498 Likely Democratic Primary Voters
Margin of Sampling Error for this question = plus/minus 4.5%

A couple of observations. First, the big winner here is Cafaro. Unless Sawyer has a big stash of money somewhere that no one knows about, he's not going to be able to hit the airwaves. Cafaro can which presumably will help her numbers. The only other candidate with the known ability to make noise for two weeks is Betty Sutton who trails badly.

Second, the undecided vote looks tiny for a primary contest that has been visible only to political junkies until the past week. I can only speculate that the self-selection of "likely voter" has something to do with that.

Third, k-pho was on the lookout because he was one of the 498 polled. He says it was an automated poll that listed each candidate with the number to push if you planned to vote for that candidate. He wondered if the person listed last suffers in such a poll -- the person listed last is Sutton. I have no idea, but if anyone with poll wisdom wants to comment, we'd love to hear it.

10 comments:

Modern Esquire said...

Standard practice in polling is to rotate the order in which candidates are named, I'd assume they would rotate in the number dialed as well. Depends on who did the poll and if they're a professional political polling outfit.

Surprised to see Capri doing so well and Sutton so weak.

FamineHorse said...

To paraphrase Johnny Cochran: if they didn't rotate, you must excoriate!

Scott Piepho said...

K-pho and I both assumed they rotated them. Then the poll is posted with the order much like K remembers it so I posted the inquiry. But it will take more than a poll critique for Sutton to turn this around.

Dan said...

methodology

Scott Piepho said...

Dan

Thanks for the info. In trying to translate this from survey-ese, it sounds like they did not rotate: "All respondents heard the questions asked identically."

Again, not being a pollster, I have no idea how that impacts the validity. If it has an effect, I doubt it's much more than a few points which doesn't help Sutton much.

She better have a hell of a media blitz planned.

Anonymous said...

If Sawyer has a stash of cash, then he coughed up a chunk to pay back taxes to Ohio. His wife is taking the blame for it.

I am sure the mishap was an honest mistake, but as a candidate for public office, one of the last things you want bugging you is the tax man. It just does not mix very well.

Anonymous said...

SuveyUSA's interview method seems hinky, but they were very accurate for WKYC in the Cleveland mayoral primary (with seven candidates).

Anonymous said...

Capri's success is shocking to me. Just from reading the blogs, I got the impression that she was DOA. Now I can't help but think she's going to win the primary.

Anonymous said...

Capri's success is not a shocker. People like her. When a candidate gains momentum, people create blogs and fictional names to tear her down. You don't tear down someone who doesn't have a chance in hell. I look forward to Capri representing me.

Scott Piepho said...

Well, A2, snide remarks about fictional names really carry a lot of moral weight coming from an anonymous commenter. Damn, you really told us.

Come on. None of the bloggers that have been going after her started after she announced. I started posting about what a bad idea she was before her formal announcement.

As I've said before, if you want to debate substance here, step up and come hard. Funny that even Cafaro supporters fall back on "well, she doens't really mean it" when I start pointing out what a horrorshow the SAW program is as a policy idea. You think you have something to say on that, bring it. Otherwise save your lame accusations.

As for looking forward to her representing you? If by some miracle she is nominated and makes it through the general election, don't hold your breath. Her adult life history has shown nothing but disdain for Ohio. The only evidence we have that she cares about the people who live here is that she says so. That's not good enough for me.