Opinion
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Can we trust the New York 23 polls showing the Conservative ahead?
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
10/28/09 11:10 AM EDT
Mark Blumenthal, an experienced Democratic pollster, provides an exhaustive analysis of the poll in the New York 23 special election commissioned by the Club for Growth from Basswood Research. The poll shows Conservative party nominee Doug Hoffman with 31%, Democrat Bill Owens with 27% and Republican Dede Scozzafava with 20%. Similar results came, as Blumenthal notes, from a Neighborhood Research poll conducted for another pro-Hoffman group.
Blumenthal starts off by noting Nate Silver’s suggestion that the results of the Basswood poll may be cooked. Blumenthal tends to disagree, but is also careful to note the limitations of polling in this kind of situation. Polling is an imperfect instrument, and particularly in the context of a special election in which it is impossible to forecast or to model what turnout will be. Blumenthal’s conclusion seems to be (and mine is) that we can trust these polls as much as we can trust any polls in a special election conducted for a particular candidate—which is not totally. I recommend Blumenthal’s blogpost as a superb example of polling analysis, worth rereading and pondering long after the New York 23 race is decided.
As for New York 23, which I discussed in my Examiner column today, my sense is that the Basswood and Neighborhood Research polls may well be reasonably accurate, but might not be—and that we won’t know with full assurance until we have the election results in hand.
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