Releasing selected pieces of internal polling is a time-honored tradition in politics, but some campaigns are better than others at the spin.
The campaign for Republican Joe “Not a Beer” Coors announced today that their internal poll shows Coors beating Democrat Ed Perlmutter by 9 points. Of course, the poll was done weeks ago and the campaign isn’t releasing any information about the methodology, as Fox 31 reports:
But Democrats aren’t taking the poll very seriously.That’s because the survey was done nearly a month ago – and because Coors campaign, which commissioned it, isn’t releasing any crosstabs, more fine-grained results based on different demographic groups…
…Perlmutter, who walloped Republican Ryan Frazier by nine points in 2010, amidst a national GOP tidal wave, doesn’t buy Coors’ poll either.
The Coors campaign might have gotten some real traction if they had just tried harder to make their “internal” numbers a little more believable. Coors beating Perlmutter by 2-3 points? That’s possible. Coors beating Perlmutter by 9 points? Uh, no.
If you’re going to go public with a number that nobody will take seriously, you might as well go BIG — tell the world that your polling has Coors beating Perlmutter by 90 points!
It’s particularly absurd to think that Coors could be beating Perlmutter by 9 points in a poll conducted in July, given that voters are barely informed about candidates for President at that point. Lynn Bartels at the Denver newspaper blog lists the three questions that the Coors campaign made public, and it seems likely that the “who would you vote for” question came after a battery of positive statements about Coors and negative spin on Perlmutter.
Look, Coors is trying hard to portray this as a winnable race by spending a ton of his own money on early TV ads. But we doubt the NRCC will take this poll any more seriously than local media.
Full story: Coors Poll Update Shows Him Beating Perlmutter 98-2
and the sample was 100% primary-voting Republicans. That sounds about right for Perlmutter in that demo. He gets a lot of the “I’m a partisan but I don’t vote a straight ticket, I vote for who I like” votes.
Perlmutter releasing his own internal polling. Generally, if your opponent releases a poll with bad news for you, the simple solution is to release a counter-poll. Failing to release one is often taken as a sign that you don’t have any good news of your own to report.
Joe Coors and his family do have very high name identification.
family poll released last week naming Coors’ Banquet Beer “America’s favorite” – by a very wide 4 to 1 margain. Coincidence??
than the ridiculous poll showing “Invisible Joe” Miklosi trailing Mike Coffman by just four percentage points last week.
Is he running against “Invisible Mike”?
Joe can’t say that about himself… and time’s running out.
The Hill (6/12/06)
Oh noes!!! Ed is doooomed!!