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September 18, 2014 11:00 AM UTC

Quinnipiac Senate Poll: Ah, Nevermind

  • 21 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Jumping the polling shark
Meanwhile, over at Quinnipiac University…

The big news in Colorado politics yesterday was the release of a Quinnipiac University poll on the Governor's race showing — rather unbelievably, really — Republican Bob Beauprez leading Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper by an astounding 10-point margin. Quinnipiac's findings were roundly dismissed by political and polling experts around the country, and perhaps rightly so, given that no other publicly-available polls have ever indicated anything even remotely similar in the Governor's race.

So it was that today Quinnipiac released results from its polling of the U.S. Senate race, and guess what? According to Quinnipiac, Republican Congressman Cory Gardner is leading Democratic Sen. Mark Udall by a not-at-all-believable 8 points. As the Mark Matthews of the Denver Post explains:

The survey of more than 1,200 likely Colorado voters favored Gardner 48 to 40 percent to the incumbent Udall, with independent, or unaffiliated, candidate Steve Shogan taking home 8 percent…

…Quinnipiac's findings depart significantly from a Denver Post poll conducted last week that found Udall leading Gardner by 4 percentage points.

Similarly, Gardner's biggest advantage over Udall before the latest Quinnipiac results was 2 percentage points, according to a tally of more than dozen polls of both likely and registered voters recorded by Real Clear Politics. Other recent polls have shown the Udall and Gardner in a statistical tie or even a Udall advantage.

There is absolutely no political "spin" required in response to this poll, because the explanation is pretty simple: if Quinnipiac is correct, then every other polling outfit in the country has been wrong. Just in case you are still conflicted about the answer to the previous question, consider this nugget from The Post:

Prior to Wednesday's release, Beauprez biggest lead was 1 percentage point, even among other polls of likely voters. Most recent polls have shown the two gubernatorial candidates within the margin of error.

In both of its polls this week, Quinnipiac relied on the same 1,211 likely Colorado voters contacted between Sept. 10 and Sept. 15. [Pols emphasis]

Now, we're no polling experts here at Colorado Pols, but if the same group of respondents are giving you the same outlier answers on the race for Governor and U.S. Senate, it's a good bet that your sample is screwed up. If that isn't evidence enough for you, consider this: Quinnipiac has Independent candidate Steve Shogan picking up enough support for 8 percent of the vote. To understand the silliness of that result, consider that in 2010, there was no Independent candidate for Governor or U.S. Senate who received even 1 percent of the vote. Obviously there are a bunch of undecided voters in the Senate race, which is no surprise, but it's completely absurd to postulate that an Independent candidate is nearing 10% of the vote in Colorado.

You can go ahead and ignore the Quinnipiac polling results from this week — and probably for the rest of the 2014 election cycle. Consider this shark officially jumped.

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21 thoughts on “Quinnipiac Senate Poll: Ah, Nevermind”

  2. Quinnipiac also published some bogus polls on gun control that showed Colorado voters split on the 15 round magazine limit as well as lower support for universal background checks than most polls. There's that famous saying that any publicity (good or bad) is good publicity … Quinnipiac sure has gotten people's attention, unfortunately for them, bad publicity doesn't work with polling outfits. 

    Quinnipiac seems to eb taking over where Rassmussen left off, now that Rassmussen has cleaned up their model so it doesn's skew as far to the right. 

      1. Then they should have stipulated that the polls be favorable to BWB and Gardner but not ridiculously far from every other poll.  Had that been the case the discussion would have been about BWB and Gardner gaining. As it is, it's mostly about how absurd the two polls are.

    1. Skippy was all over today's Open Thread bleating it. Not sure where Zippy has fallen in, but like gum on your shoe, he'll be here spinning his little heart out in no time.

      1. It's not necessary to spin a poll showing my candidate up by eight points. It's much more fun to watch Democrats try to spin this poll so it doesn't matter.

        Personally, I think the race is very close with Gardner up by a few points at most. I'm confident Gardner will win, but this will be a close race. Republicans are working for it and it's showing in the polls.

  7. Polling is starting to go to likely voters which requires a judgement of the percentages of who will actually vote.  Many of the polls that favor Udall have what I consider an unrealistic guess as to the make up.  The guess Q used is as follows:

    PARTY IDENTIFICATION
    Republican 34%
    Democrat 27
    Independent 33
    Other/DK/NA 6

    Historically in off year elections a larger percentage of Republicans turn out to vote than Dems.  It is also true that Republicans ournumber Dems by registration in Colorado by about 1%.  It is also the case that Independants tend to vote less than Rs and Ds.  Put it all together, throw in some who is or is not motivated and make your own guess.

    The Q guess is significantly different than some of the other guesses, but that is what accounts for the very different result, in my opinion.

  8. On Steve Kornacki's "Up" this morning, Nate Cohn of the New York Times'  Upshot discusses Colorado Senate race polling. He concludes that the Q poll showing Gardner up by 8 points is an outlier.  Cohn says that the real wild cards in the race to control the US Senate are Alaska and Kansas. 

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