Democrats are super excited about a poll conducted by YouGov and University of Colorado’s American Politics Research Lab that shows lower-than-expected support for U.S. Senator Cory Gardner at 25%. We’re not usually in the business of questioning the validity of polling, but we have to ask – how legit is this poll? With that in mind, we have eight questions we think the media should be asking about this poll.
- Are online polls legit? Like as a species. Who answers an online poll but those who are disgruntled?
- In 2016, Amendment 69, single payer was defeated four-to-one. This poll suggests that single-payer, essentially the same as Amendment 69, has 50% support (30% strongly favor + 20% favor). According to the 2016 election, this idea has just over 20%. How can these guys explain the 30-point discrepancy?
- Why were about 150 responses discarded?
- These numbers are from almost three months ago. Why did CU wait so long to publish the responses?
- Why didn’t you ask whether they were likely voters? To the best we can tell, this question was not asked.
- Why didn’t your R/D/U mix better reflect the electorate? The electorate typically does not look like 47% Democrats, 20% Unaffiliateds, and 33% Republicans. That’s way overweight for Democrats. Typically, weighting is done through estimated turnout models for party breakout or to match the registration of the state. This poll does neither. The turnout for the 2016 election was 33.4R, 32.7D, and 32.1U.
- Why wasn’t the survey weighted to Colorado likely profile instead of Colorado demographic profile?
- In 2016, we also found challenges with a YouGov poll showing skewed numbers. Why double down on a flawed system?
Before would-be Democratic challengers start lining up to run for U.S. Senate and before Democrats count their Senate seats, these are some pretty critical questions that need to be answered.