August 18, 2009 04:20 AM UTC

Another Week of Questionable "Robopolls" Begins Tomorrow

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• by: Colorado Pols

Back in April, the folks at North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling released a series of automated telephone poll results that raised methodological and common-sense eyeballs around the state. One of the biggest red flags was a polled name ID for Sen. Michael Bennet of almost 75%, which was an absurdly high number for a freshly-appointed Senator (and probably still is). And, well, Democrats didn’t love the poll for self-evident reasons.

Apparently they’ll be dribbling out the results of a new round of selfsame “robopolls” all week starting tomorrow. Their blogger writes:

When we polled Colorado in April and found both Michael Bennet and Bill Ritter with pretty iffy numbers that was the first time I started thinking Democrats might be in a little bit of trouble. The next week we polled Illinois and found Alexi Giannoulias and Mark Kirk tied- that furthered my sense things were shifting, and pretty much every poll we’ve conducted since then has fit that pattern.

So this week we’re back to Colorado and there’s good news for Democrats: things aren’t really any worse than they were in April in the state. And there’s good news for Republicans too: they had to like where they stood when we conducted that poll…

During the 2008 election cycle, PPP was criticized for switching up their methodology sans disclosure to produce a “big move” result–fun stuff, we’re not saying that’s what they did here, of course, but it’s helpful context. Look, we just don’t put a lot of stock in automated push-button polls like this in general–it’s just not a format that encourages a healthy cross section to participate, to say nothing of encouraging honest answers.

That said, the PPP folks did see fit to release one number today–Colorado, if they’re to be believed, has got itself a serious “birther” problem.

And lest you think all the birthers are in the south, 43% of Colorado Republicans think Barack Obama was not born in the United States, 33% think he was, and 24% are unsure.

We’re going to take the high road and assert that 67% of Colorado Republicans are not really that embarrassingly stupid, further calling into question this poll’s results. Though if they are, well, maybe we need to stop dissing the South after all.