July 29, 2010 05:20 AM UTC

Poll Has Romanoff Withing Striking Distance (But With Grain of Salt)

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• by: Colorado Pols

A group called “New Leadership Colorado” sent out a press release late this evening showing Democrat Andrew Romanoff within striking distance of Sen. Michael Bennet in the race for the Democratic nomination for Senate. “New Leadership Colorado” claims that it has no ties to either Romanoff or Bennet, but obviously their interests are with Romanoff (because there would be no other reason to announce this otherwise).

The automated phone survey shows Bennet leading Romanoff 44-40, with what they say is a margin of error of +/-3.6%. Given that every other head-to-head poll released to this point has shown Bennet with a double-digit lead, this is good news for Romanoff, right?

Maybe.

The polling and memo was done by a Democratic communications firm called Zata3, a name that should be familiar to many politicos for their robocalls, direct mail and other communications tools such as text messaging.

But what Zata3 does not normally do is polling. That doesn’t mean that they definitely don’t have these numbers correct, but they are not a polling firm. You hire Zata3 to do persuasion phone calls or text messaging — not polling — just like you wouldn’t normally hire a polling firm to do your direct mail (or for a real-world example, you wouldn’t go to a dry cleaner to buy a sandwich). This is no knock on Zata3, it’s just that it seems odd that you wouldn’t use a professional polling firm if you wanted real polling results.

We wondered when we first got the press release at 6:17 PM why anyone would release something this potentially helpful so late in the day; normally you would never send something to the press this late because it would almost certainly get buried and not make it on the news. But perhaps that was the point — to put it out late enough that news outlets wouldn’t have time to really check into the data and the “pollster.”

Full press release after the jump.

A new Zata3 poll commissioned by New Leadership in Colorado shows former Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff surging to nearly within the margin of error against Senator Michael Bennet.  The survey of 800 likely and somewhat likely Democratic primary voters shows Bennett with 44% and Romanoff with 40% and 16% still undecided with two weeks until election day.  The margin of error is +/- 3.6%.

A copy of the polling memo is attached hereto.

***For questions about the survey, please contact the polling firm:  Brad

Chism, Zata3 – 202.386.6024****

New Leadership in Colorado is an independen committee with no ties with either Romanoff or Bennet.

Disclaimer:

Paid for by New Leadership in Colorado.  Not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.  New Leadership in Colorado is responsible for the content of this advertising.