Time for a poll (or two)
Since I’ve covered a lot of news over the last few days, I’m going to take a bit of a break tonight and put up two polls for your consideration. (That and I’m a curious sort anyway.)
If this were the regular fall campaign, the point at which we sit would be analogous to late September. A lot of time and effort has been invested so far, but anything can happen. So I want to see where my readers think things are.
I’ll be back in the swing tomorrow with some interesting news.
Update: I knew I forgot to do something. Now it’s a little more legit, since I honestly don’t think Dan Bongino would get over 99% of the votes. See what happens when you’re creating a poll while half-asleep?
Odds and ends number 42
As you likely know, this is the post where I pick out a few items worth a paragraph or three but not a full post. So here goes.
Polling is in the news these days – sometimes as a real reflection of the political scene, and sometimes just to make news and push a particular agenda. There are two recent polls which I believe reflect the latter.
I’m usually not too trusting of polls in which I can’t find a political or geographical breakdown, and a recent Washington Post poll fits this bill. Taken simply as a sample of 1,064 adults in Maryland, the Post poll gives Martin O’Malley a 55% approval vs. 36% disapproval – compare that to the 53-40 split in the recent Gonzales Poll, which I can easily ascertain subgroups and methodology in. Other disagreements: a 50-44 split in favor of gay marriage on the Post poll vs. a 49-47 split in favor on Gonzales and the “key issue” question: the economy was the top choice of 49% in Gonzales but only 32% on the Post poll.
Without seeing the methodology besides the sample size, my guess is that the local Washington D.C. area was oversampled by the Post. Obviously the economy is better there than in some other portions of the state, and since the area is more liberal than the rest of the state (hard to believe, but true) the other numbers seem to point in that direction as well.
Another poll update
I’m working on some other writing today but I wanted to take a moment and catch you up on some results from my best local blog poll.
The fourth matchup was a doozy. At first Delmar DustPan took a modest advantage, but then The Other Salisbury News surged over a short period of time to take a significant lead. But it wasn’t enough as Delmar DustPan stormed back to take the round and advance.
In percentage terms, Delmar DustPan ran away with 69 percent of the vote, while The Other Salisbury News rounded up to 31 percent. Salisbury Soapbox picked up less than 1 percent.
Opening round match number 5 is also an interesting battle between a number of somewhat similar sites from around the region, so we’ll see how that turns out.
A new feature
A few weeks back I was contacted by an internet entrepreneur who wanted me to try his product. This happens from time to time, but his request was for an interesting reason.
It seems that the creator of SendLove.to had too many liberal websites already signed up and it was skewing his results. Somehow or other he got wind of this site and that it was conservative, and he asked me to install his plugin in order to balance things out.
So I thought, what have I got to lose and I installed it last night. (It was pretty easy, even for me – I’m not really all that much of a WordPress maven.) If you were reading the last dossier I put up and came to it from the Facebook page (thus, going directly to the article instead of through my main page) you may have noticed first that certain names are pretty in pink. In addition there are tabs on the bottom where the comments are with the names Mitt Romney, Nancy Pelosi, Al Sharpton, and others. You would see the three I mentioned again (and again in pink) if you saw this page as an individual page because SendLove scans a post’s content for certain keywords and highlights them to solicit your opinion on the person. You can simply vote them up or down, or add a comment.
I can see a couple minor bugs in it – for example, it wouldn’t let me get back to a couple of the tabs once I pulled another down – but even just the little bit I played with it was interesting. I can even bring up past articles and it will bring up any name they have in the system, so I just dinged Ben Cardin quite nicely. (Since I brought him into this post now you can too.) And it doesn’t work from the main page, although I’m told they’re working on this. Since a good portion of my traffic comes directly to a post from Facebook, Twitter, or a search engine this isn’t such a bad omission.
Obviously I talk about national issues and political figures quite a bit, so I would imagine regular readers have an opportunity to weigh in a lot about particular people and follow the discussion from post to post (these are not wedded to one post like a normal comment.) I noticed Nancy Pelosi has a high national rating, for example, so my readers are going to have to take care of that.
As I figured would happen after Labor Day passed my readership is back on the upswing. So give this new feature a try and let me know how you like it.
A wild polling ride
As you may have noticed, I’ve placed one of my infamous political polls in the sidebar.
My recollection from when I did this last year was that my polls may not necessarily be the best indicator of public sentiment, but they are pretty good at seeing how passionate backing for a candidate is. For example, I’ve been tracking interim totals over the time the poll’s been up to see the ebb and flow of trends.
I put the poll up late Wednesday evening. When I went to bed early Thursday morning there weren’t a lot of votes yet, but I did find out someone in the Capps campaign reads the site. The totals at that point: Capps 7, Bongino 3, Wargotz 1.
So I woke up Thursday morning and went about my day. Checking in at 4:00 that afternoon, the updated figures were: Bongino 20, Capps 16, Wargotz 1. Someone woke up the Bongino camp, I guess.
But then Thursday evening there was a concerted Eric Wargotz push, so much so that when I went to bed around midnight the revised totals were: Wargotz 63, Capps 25, Bongino 20, Vaughn 3, Broadus 1, and Hoover 1. Someone got the others on the board about 24 hours into the poll (although Broadus was added to the poll on Thursday afternoon.)
The roller-coaster ride continued this morning as the Capps forces went back to work: Capps 160, Bongino 105, Wargotz 94, Vaughn 35, Hoover 5, Broadus 4.
But then the Capps surge stopped and Bongino is trending – as of this moment it’s Bongino 166, Capps 160, Wargotz 94, Vaughn 35, Broadus 5, Hoover 5. In other words, over the last 7 hours all but one vote went to Bongino.
Obviously I don’t do a scientific poll. But as I noted above one thing this does measure to some extent is the passion and organization behind a candidate. I figure that people who are out to stack a poll such as mine exist in proportion to the actual support they have in the population, give or take a few. (I can also tell you it’s making my page load number huge today – normally I get about 1.3 to 1.5 page loads per reader; today it’s about 3.5 per.) So if there’s only 1 person in 100 who would stack a poll for Rick Hoover vs. 40 who would for Eric Wargotz, that’s probably how the poll should work too, more or less. And my readership likely trends a little more conservative than the average GOP voter.
It’s a lot of fun for me to watch, though, and it makes for an interesting post. That’s what counts.
New City Council poll
There’s a new sidebar poll on the City Council race, with an important difference.
I have changed the parameters to discourage frequent repeat voting. Although someone could skew the results to an extent, it’s going to be a little more difficult to do.
As for the poll this replaces, I found it interesting that support for creating five single-person districts in the city is reasonably strong. Over 50 percent (51.42% to be exact) favored that option, although a small portion of that group advocated adding two at-large Council members to base it more closely on Wicomico County. 40 percent favored the current system, while the other 8.57% would like all five elected at-large.
It’s highly doubtful this will happen anytime soon, though, as primary results indeed suggest three City Council members (Terry Cohen, Tim Spies, and Debbie Campbell) will represent the Camden neighborhood. Obviously they’ll have nothing to do with making that neighborhood just one of five districts; meanwhile areas like Johnson’s Lake, Doverdale, and the southeast quadrant of the city where I live may have no local representatives if results hold true.
Odds and ends number 26
I have a bunch of stuff today which piqued my interest but only needs anywhere from a sentence to a couple paragraphs to take care of. So here goes.
Over the last few days as the Madison protests continue, we’ve had Big Labor flex its muscles in a number of locations around the country. Needless to say I can’t be everywhere at once, and I was working during the Annapolis protest.
However, my blogging cohorts have helped me out. With on-the-spot reports I feature my Potomac TEA Party Report friend Ann Corcoran from Annapolis and the excellent photojournalist who goes by the moniker ‘El Marco’ reporting from his hometown of Denver on his Looking at the Left website.
Corcoran also lets us know that the unions will be back with their Astroturf in Annapolis on March 14, with the intent of making this a bigger and better protest. (By the way, school is scheduled to be in session for Wicomico County students on March 14 so the teachers here risk the last preparation day for grade 3-8 assessment tests if they skip town to attend.)
Turning to national politics, the other day I was talking about the prospects of Ron Paul’s third Presidential bid. Well, the ‘money bomb’ on Monday for the Liberty PAC that Paul leads raised over $750,000 – the ticker inhabits the front page of the Liberty PAC site. Guess he can afford those plane trips now and, if I were a betting man, I’d wager an announcement of his 2012 campaign will occur shortly after (or even during) the Iowa trip.
Finally, let’s talk about a poll or two. This morning Rasmussen released a poll claiming that 67% of Americans don’t support the ‘cut-and-run’ Democrats in Wisconsin (and now, Indiana) – naturally, the only group which approved by a bare plurality (48-44) are those who self-identified as Democrats.
Speaking of those who identify themselves as progressives, I have some exciting news on a new experiment.
I’m working with Progressive Delmarva‘s ’Two Sentz’ on a joint poll which will appear at both sites later this afternoon; it’s the final polling on the City Council primary race.
While I’ve found that the fundraising results roughly parallel the polling I’ve done insofar as the top contenders are concerned, it’s obvious my readership skews to the right. So in order to perhaps get a clearer picture of the electorate I figured I needed to add some lean to the left. So we’ll see what the results show when the poll ends on Monday.
And then we’ll all see just how accurate we were Tuesday night.
Boda surges to lead in new Salisbury Council poll
Well, the results are in from my second Salisbury City Council poll, and the winner is… my advertising fund. Well, how else would one explain Muir Boda moving from a tie for third in the first poll from late January to first place this time? At today’s Chamber forum Boda confided he had seen a good amount of traffic to his website from here. (That’s called a hint. I don’t guarantee any of the other seven would have the same result, but there is an ‘ads’ tab above.)
In truth, the poll showed essentially the same contenders as before, although instead of what looked like a four-person race it’s now perhaps five as Joel Dixon made a solid upward move to close the gap on the frontrunners. Conversely, the one who may need to worry most based on results would be Orville Dryden. His good first impression may be fading, although he still looks primed to survive the March 1st primary. And the survivor out of the bottom three (Ford, Mitchell, Taylor) has a steep uphill climb to make in the final five weeks if this poll is any indication of eventual results.
This poll was a somewhat shorter effort than the last one but there were still 162 votes cast. The order of finish is listed here, with the previous poll finish, percentage and percentage change from the initial poll following:
- (3 – tie) Muir Boda – 37 votes (22.84% – up 4.37%)
- (3 – tie)Terry Cohen – 33 votes (20.37% – up 1.9%)
- (1) Tim Spies – 30 votes (18.52% – down 0.76%)
- (2) Orville Dryden – 25 votes (15.43% – down 3.45%)
- (5) Joel Dixon – 20 votes (12.35% – up 2.71%)
- (6) Bruce Ford – 6 votes (3.7% – down 3.13%)
- (8) Laura Mitchell – 6 votes (3.7% – down 0.32%)
- (7) Michael Taylor – 5 votes (3.09% – down 1.33%)
A few other notes of interest:
As you’ll see in my rundown of today’s Chamber forum tomorrow, the format and questioning were very different from the initial effort last week. It’s possible that, with two remaining forums next week (AFP and NAACP) the finished product between the two for PAC-14 may not be aired until after the primary and edited to cut out the two bottom finishers. It was hoped, though, that the editing would be done for Tuesday.
I finally caught up to Michael Taylor today and he apologized for not answering my questions. I may do an audio interview (you could call it a podcast) with him early next week. However, it probably won’t take the exact same form as the questioning I gave the other seven. He may remain the lone candidate in the race without a website or Facebook page, though.
Having the split forum before the poll hurt most of the candidates who participated in round 1 – only Terry Cohen increased her percentage from the last poll. Meanwhile, my top gainers were two who participated today.
I’m working on enhancing the poll and broadening its scope for the final effort before the primary. Stay tuned to see if my effort bears fruit.
On the O’s: guarded optimism
As spring training begins for the local hometown teams, it appears fans are cautiously optimistic about the Orioles’ chances – at least that’s how they polled here.
Let’s do a quick review: since losing the 1997 ALCS to Cleveland, the Orioles have been among the most mediocre of franchises as they’ve endured 13 straight losing seasons – in fact, the 70-win mark has eluded them the last four. But the majority of those responding thought the revamped Orioles, who have added power bats like Derrek Lee, Mark Reynolds, and perhaps Vladimir Guerrero (assuming he passes a physical) would eclipse that number and maybe – just maybe – break that string of losing seasons.
But the optimism stopped there, as no one expected the team to win 90 games or make the playoffs. Perhaps that’s more due to the reputation of the American League East than actual talent level.
And there were a few who chose to be pessimistic, as 1/6 of those voting foresaw the moves blowing up in Andy McPhail’s face. They figured a 100-loss season wasn’t out of the question, and if neither Derrek Lee nor Mark Reynolds adjusts well to the American League, Vladimir is indeed in the coda of his career, and the pitching fails us it could happen. But I fall into the camp of thinking 81 or more wins is indeed possible. (Over 80% believed Baltimore should win at least 75 games.)
With the season now just around the corner, optimism is king and all 30 teams might fancy themselves World Series contenders. (Okay, maybe not the woeful - as in 57-105 last season - Pittsburgh Pirates. They’ve actually gone nearly two decades without a winning season, which is too bad because they play in a nice ballpark. And to think these two franchises tangled for a World Series crown twice back in the 1970′s – I remember the ’79 Series well although O’s fans might prefer to forget.)
Hopefully an improved major league teams pays dividends down the chain as well since the Shorebirds fans are overdue for a playoff team. I’ve seen one playoff game in six seasons here so consider me one who thinks it’s time!
The Orioles’ season starts on April 1 at Tampa Bay, with the home opener April 4 against Detroit. (Sorry about that home opening sweep by the Tigers; things will look up from there.)
Poll results:
- 62.5% believe the Orioles could finish with a .500 season (81-81)
- 20.83% foresee a 75-win season
- 12.5% think they’ll lose 100 games
- 4.17% believe they’ll only match the 66-96 mark last year’s team produced
- No one saw the Orioles win 90 games, make the playoffs, or win the World Series
Cain raised to top in GOP poll
The former Godfather Pizza CEO pulled it out in the end, but a widely split GOP Presidential poll here drew votes for nearly twenty possible contenders. This goes to show that…we need to see just who will enter the field for sure, as Cain is the first reasonable contender to establish an exploratory committee.
This is how they finished:
- Herman Cain (former Godfather Pizza CEO, radio host) – 10 (12.82%)
- Gary Johnson (former New Mexico governor) – 9 (11.54%)
- Chris Christie (New Jersey governor) – 8 (10.26%)
- Ron Paul (Congressman from Texas, 2008 Presidential candidate) – 8 (10.26%)
- Newt Gingrich (former Speaker of the House) – 7 (8.97%)
- Sarah Palin (2008 VP candidate, former Alaska governor) – 6 (7.69%)
- Rudy Giuliani (2008 Presidential candidate, former NYC mayor) – 5 (6.41%)
- Michele Bachmann (Congressman from Minnesota) – 4 (5.13%)
- Tim Pawlenty (outgoing Minnesota governor) – 4 (5.13%)
- Mitt Romney (2008 Presidential candidate, former Massachusetts governor) – 3 (3.85%)
- Donald Trump (businessman) – 3 (3.85%)
- Mitch Daniels (Indiana governor) – 2 (2.56%)
- Jim DeMint (Senator from South Carolina) – 2 (2.56%)
- Paul Ryan (Congressman from Wisconsin) – 2 (2.56%) – write-in
- Rick Santorum (former Senator from Pennsylvania) – 2 (2.56%)
- George Allen (former Senator from Virginia) – 1 (1.28%) – write-in
- Mike Pence (Congressman from Indiana) – 1 (1.28%) – withdrew
- John Thune (Senator from North Dakota) – 1 (1.28%)
- Haley Barbour (Mississippi governor) – 0 (o%)
- Mike Huckabee (2008 Presidential candidate, former Arkansas governor) – 0 (0%)
If you look at your top 6 candidates in this poll, you’d find the TEA Party carried a great amount of influence along with the libertarian wing of the GOP (who would tend to support Ron Paul and Gary Johnson.)
But would all of them be viable? Time will tell, but if you look at the top contenders from 2008 there’s little desire for a rewarmed candidate. Since I don’t consider Ron Paul as an ‘establishment’ candidate, the top votegetter among the group was Rudy Giuliani with 5 votes. Even combining the other 2008 aspirants (including Paul) they collected just 16 votes, which is barely 20 percent of the total vote. Mike Huckabee was shut out.
The only 2008 names which seem to have support are Ron Paul and Sarah Palin, who didn’t run for the top job four years ago but was added to the ticket just prior to the GOP convention. She polled reasonably well in this trial, but those who believe the nomination is hers to lose may want to think again.
Over the next month or two we’ll likely see the field shake out a bit as some of the bottom-feeders (and maybe a top name or two) decide to take a pass. The remainder of the contenders will likely begin getting their teams together for the busy times one year hence.
Isn’t it a bit early for this?
Well, regardless of the fact the survivor of the process won’t know the final result for another 21 1/2 months, the polls have begun for the GOP nomination in 2012, with the winner most likely taking on President Obama that November.
Today Rasmussen released a poll which showed Mitt Romney has the early lead for the GOP nomination, with 24 percent replying they prefer Mitt at this nascent stage. Sarah Palin netted 19% while Mike Huckabee picked up 17 percent. The top contender who didn’t run in 2008, Newt Gingrich, had 11 percent while national newcomer Tim Pawlenty finished under the “undecided” (10%) with a 6% score. Ron Paul and Mitch Daniels rounded out the field.
One weakness in the Rasmussen Poll is that they somewhat arbitrarily picked the seven contenders, yet they point out that the leaders at this stage rarely end up with the nomination. As I recall, at this time four years ago we were supposed to have a rematch of the abortive 2000 New York Senate race between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. Hillary was the last person standing between Barack Obama and the 2008 Democratic nomination, but Rudy was an early casualty in the GOP race.
This is notable about the methodology, though:
The survey of 1,000 Likely GOP Primary Voters was conducted on January 18, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. Likely GOP Primary Voters include both Republicans and unaffiliated voters likely to vote in a GOP Primary.
In other words, they rely on an open primary of sorts. More tellingly:
Romney, Palin and Huckabee are essentially in a three-way tie among voters who describe themselves as very conservative. Those who characterize themselves as somewhat conservative and moderate/liberal have a clear preference for Romney.
Yet Palin has the lead among TEA Partiers, and there’s no real way of knowing just how much influence they’ll have over the GOP nominating process in states with both open and closed primaries.
New Hampshire is a state with an open primary, and a straw poll was conducted there over the weekend – 273 Granite State Republicans scattered their votes among a total of 20 candidates. It’s not particularly surprising that Mitt Romney won, but 35 percent isn’t all that overwhelming considering he comes from a neighboring state and is a name well-known to “establishment” Republicans. Ron Paul was a distant second with 11 percent.
However, if you look at the candidates who could be considered the “darlings” of the TEA Party (Paul, Palin, Michele Bachmann, Jim DeMint, Herman Cain, Mike Pence, and Gary Johnson) you get just as much support as Romney drew – they add up to 37 percent. Once the TEA Party can coalesce around one or two candiates, the race will be joined.
It’s pretty amazing to think that only one of those mentioned (Herman Cain) has even taken the step to form an exploratory committee – the rest are still considering if and when to jump in. But surely over the next few months the final field will emerge, and it will be fun to see how the race shakes out.
How the poll goes
As you can see over to the right of this article, my “best local blog” poll is taking a hiatus for the holidays, replaced by an RNC poll that I’ll leave up for a few days. But I found the opening round results of my local blog poll quite interesting.
Last year, I had three finalists – afterthegoldrush, Salisbury News, and Twirling, Twirling, Twirling Towards Freedom. Since I only had twelve competitors last year, the first round of four polls cut the field to six (4 winners + 2 wildcards), then the semifinals cut the remainder in half (the two winners + a wildcard.) afterthegoldrush was a wildcard in the first round that survived, won its semifinal, and defeated Salisbury News 152-146 in the final poll (4TF received six votes.)
But in 2010 I expanded the field to 24, and since I want to maintain 3-way races the eight round winners will be joined by just one wildcard into one of three semifinals, with the three winners moving on. From here on out, just like the NFL playoffs, it’s win or go home.
Of the three who were in the finals last year, two have survived into the semifinals. Here is the list in seeding order, based strictly on the number of votes with which each won its individual round.
- Random Thoughts of a Citymouse (191 votes)
- Right Coast (175 votes – wildcard)
- The Salisbury Grinch (93 votes)
- afterthegoldrush (65 votes)
- Salisbury Soapbox (56 votes)
- Delmarva Shorebirds Blog (40 votes)
- Twirling, Twirling, Twirling Towards Freedom (37 votes)
- Delmarva Sportsmen (17 votes)
- Delmar Dustpan (8 votes)
While many contenders garnered more than eight votes, they didn’t happen to be in such a weak first-round draw. That’s life. In the semifinals the rounds will be made as equal as possible.
This poll will return January 3rd with the first of three semifinals, with the winner being crowned later in January.
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