Reply to Washington Post Poll vs Catania Internal Poll

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele]There is a public poll out today that might be said to support the Catania campaign argument (but with a caveat):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/mike-debonis/wp/2014/10/01/new-d-c-mayoral-poll-muriel-bowser-leads-david-catania-by-8-points/

"A new poll commissioned by a D.C.-based, pro-business advocacy group finds a tighter D.C. mayoral race than seen in previously published polling, with Democrat Muriel E. Bowser leading independent David A. Catania by eight percentage points among likely voters."
...
"The new poll differs from the NBC4/Washington Post/Marist poll in selecting respondents from a voter list rather than by dialing random numbers."

The Catania argument has been that random dialing reaches people who don't accurately say whether they are registered to vote or likely to vote and who are not well-informed about the election, answer based on party affiliation, and are unlikely to vote. The result is inflated numbers for the Democrat.

This poll would seem to support that contention. By using voter lists, it reaches people with a history of voting who are known to be registered. Both polls, as well as Catania's internal poll, found similar levels of support for Catania. The Post showed much higher numbers for Bowser, just as Catania has argued random polling would show. Therefore, this poll supports the contention that the race is much closer than the Post poll suggests.

However, here is the caveat, this poll may have under-sampled African Americans. The impact of that is something I simply don't know enough about. Obviously, sampling more AAs would probably help Bowser, but I don't know by how much.
[/quote]

Thanks for the insight Jeff.  I am with you on a lot of this, but I can't get over how far off the black/white percentages are, and how that would affect the final numbers.  Do you have any insight or scuttlebutt from the Bowser camp related to what their internal polls are saying?  Chuck Thies said on Twitter that her internal polls were closer to this 8 point gap.  [/quote]

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