Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Peduto leads by Two Scores at 1-Week Warning

Gunaxin

That's the news:

Peduto took 39% to former Auditor General Jack Wagner’s 32%. 8% go for state Rep. Jake Wheatley, 1% for activist AJ Wheatley, and 18% of voters remain undecided. (PoliticsPA, Keegan Gibson)

Seven points; that's a start. It represents a 15 pt. swing in Peduto's direction over the past 6 weeks.

However, the Keystone Analytics poll seems to under-represent 18-34 year old voters compared to both 2009 and 2005, assumes relatively more equal participation among each Council district than has been the norm, and is backed by a Realtors association that is campaigning for Jack Wagner. All three possible sources of bias would argue for perhaps an even greater Peduto lead.

So Bill's apparent 7-point lead could easily be 9 or more.

And as long as we're reading PoliticsPA:

[Wagner is] also the clear choice of Republican interests in the race. State Sen. Don White (R-Indiana) gave him $5,000 and the pro-life group Family PAC gave him $2,500. Range Resources chipped in, too. (KG, II)

Emphasis ours, but why not? It's a fact.

BONUS / UPDATE: Some people on Twitter are having fun with the incessant Wagner and Ravenstahl attacks on the front runner.

8 comments:

  1. Somebody should give Wander some money. He was out there for Romney all that time.

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  2. Wonder if Luke is saving some money to send Wander's way?

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  3. It is not backed by a Realtors association. Those numbers are not correct

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    1. Read. Keystone Analytics is a "wholly owned subsidiary of the Realtors Association." What numbers are you viewing?

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  4. I don't know if there is a way to definitively prove it, but I strongly suspect that the "Swift Boat" ads have ended up backfiring, particularly in the context of Wagner running a campaign sorely lacking in policy details, such that character and other personal qualities are all he is really running on.

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  5. By the way, I wouldn't bother trying to "unskew" this poll, particularly based on reweighting the reported sample. That's a dangerous game to try to play under the best of circumstances (meaning with full knowledge of the pollster's methodology AND information about their track record AND other polls to use for comparison), and doing so probably wouldn't have as much impact as one might imagine anyway in this case, and there is no need for Peduto partisans to engage in such efforts in any event (since there is no real rhetorical advantage (or disadvantage) to 7 points versus 9 or whatever).

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    Replies
    1. During 2012, the unskewed polls guy had web design worse than his research design.

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  6. +1 for "In 1992, @billpeduto voted that Sid Bream was safe."

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