Melissa Hart's campaign conducted a brief conference call this afternoon with Neil Newhouse, Principal of the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, to discuss the variance in polling in this race, specifically the recent Susquehanna poll showing Hart leading Democrat Jason Altmire by just four points, 46 - 42, with 11 percent undecided.
Newhouse started by saying he thought all the screens applied in the Susquehanna poll seemed reasonable and basically matched what they use at POS. But when you take a look at the order of the questions, you can spot the problem. The Susquehanna questionnaire (available here in pdf) starts with a number of routine questions: right track/wrong track, most important problem facing U.S. today, Bush JA, Congress JA, name ID/favorable/unfavorable ratings, and then a reelect question for Hart.
Newhouse said normally, at this point, most pollsters proceed directly to the ballot question. Susquehanna did not. Instead, they asked the following:
Have you seen, read or heard anything either on TV, the radio, in the newspaper or through any other source about the recent resignation by Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley due to email messages of a sexual nature he sent to teenage males working in the congressional page program?
The people who responded "yes" (which was 94% of the overall sample) were then asked this follow up:
Will what you have seen, read or heard about this issue make you more likely or less likely to vote Republican in the upcoming election for Congress or will it have no impact on your opinion?
Only after bringing up Foley did Susquehanna immediately proceed to ask voters whether they preferred Hart or Altmire.
Newhouse said he was "astounded" that the firm would bias its sample by placing a Foley question ahead of the ballot question and said that he thought it was remarkable that even with that bias Hart still came out with a four point lead.
Another interesting note from Newhouse which serves to support Jay's speculation earlier this week that movement toward the Democrats in second and third-tier seats may be simply a lack of campaign activity on the part of Republican incumbents rather than proof of an impending GOP meltdown.
Here's what I mean. Newhouse said that his polling showed the race in PA-04 tightening down to about a six-point lead in the first part of October. However, in the last ten days Hart went up with a response ad and the NRCC also came in with some negative ads. Guess what happened? According to Newhouse, Altimire's unfavorable rating tripled over the last two weeks, from 7 to 22 percent and Hart's lead in the race expanded back out to 12 points, stabilizing beyond the margin of error.
Keep in mind, this is the view coming from the Hart campaign and their pollster. Still, the argument that the Susquehanna questionnaire is problematic seems very legitimate, and the other nuggets of information seem to fit with previously explored possibilities.
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