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You are here: Home / Blog / Beware of polls (warning #3,652)

March 27, 2009

Beware of polls (warning #3,652)

One should always beware of over-reading or over-interpreting polls.  

Polls are useful indicators at a moment of time and may be accurate to a certain number of percentage points.

Or not.

It is particularly hard to poll a primary many, many months ahead of that primary.

Take the potential Republican primary between long-time Republican incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter and a likely challenger, ex-Representative and 2004 primary challenger Pat Toomey.

Toomey came very close to winning in 2004 and is expected to launch a new challenge for 2010.

Two polls came out this week on this potential Republican primary.  One showed Toomey 14% ahead of Specter while the other showed Specter 15% ahead.

One of these polls is wrong; on the other hand, perhaps both polls are wrong.  The variance is too great.

The bottom line is the Specter is in a world of hurt and could lose a Republican primary.

The other bottom line is to take all polls, particularly primary polls long before the election, with a few grains of salt.

Read on for the poll results

A Quinnipiac Univ. poll conducted March 19-23 and released March 25 – surveyed 1,056 registered voters.  Subsample of 423 Republicans
.
Republican Primary Matchup
41% – Pat Toomey  
27% – Sen. Arlen Specter
32% – undecided, other

A Philadelphia Daily News/WGAL-TV/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review/WTAE-TV/WPVI-TV/Times-Shamrock Newspapers poll conducted March 17-22 by Franklin & Marshall College – surveyed 662 adults. Subsample of 211 Republican registered voters.  

Republican Primary Matchup
33% – Sen. Arlen Specter
18% – Pat Toomey  
 2% – Margaret Luksik
47% – undecided, other

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