Pollster John Couvillon on Thursday rebutted the lengthy criticism of his survey gauging the state of play of the special election campaign for an Alabama Senate seat.
Couvillon, of JMC Analytics, was responding to appointed Sen. Luther Strange, whose political adviser Travis Smith in a leaked campaign memo to supporters tore apart his poll from a few weeks ago, conducted just after round one of the special Republican primary in which the incumbent advanced to the Sept. 26 runoff when he finished 6 percentage points back of Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.
“Mr. Smith’s passionate defense of his candidate is perfectly appropriate (and understandable) in a contentious Senate campaign,” Couvillon wrotein a lengthy memo of his own that he posted on his firm’s website. “However, it’s unfortunate that he made several assertions not supported by facts or a simple reading of the contents of the poll. Furthermore, JMC’s polls have fully disclosed their methodology, the precise wording of the questions, and have provided detailed crosstabs within the poll release. JMC respectfully asks that similar disclosures be done by the Strange campaign.”
The JMC poll, comssioned just after the Aug. 15 special primary, showed Moore leading Strange by 19 percentage points. The Strange campaign’s memo complains about the firm’s methodology, modeling, screening and overall track record. Instead, Strange’s team points to a more recent poll from Harper Polling, showing just a 2 point race, as a true representation of the state of the race.
Nonsense, Couvillon said.
“While a rebuttal from Senator Luther Strange’s campaign is an understandable reaction from an incumbent who ran second in his party’s primary (and who, one week into the runoff, trails by 19 points), the campaign’s rebuttal was written with minimal research done to back up its assertions. JMC respectfully wishes to set the facts straight,” Couvillon said.
