Posted by Public Strategy Associates released the poll this morning of likely GOP primary voters in the the gubernatorial and AG races.
Here is a taste of it. Head on over to their site to see the full details.
Likely GOP Primary Voters: 1st and 2nd Choice
Not a big surprise to see a lot of undecided voters in both races at this point.
Likely GOP Primary Voters: AG Ballot
I hope to have a little more on this later.
2010 Big List
2010 Senate Elections
2010 House Elections
Press Releases
It’s good to have some numbers to look at in this crowded field. I posted some of my thoughts on my site: http://www.theworldaroundyou.com/2010/02/09/latest-poll-shows-byrne-leads-in-republican-primary-but-many-undecided/
The Moore Swoon begins. Looks like Byrne- James – Bentley as the players, with Byrne-James the obvious frontrunners.
Troy King has been in office for 6 years and he is only at 27% in a Republican primary. Wow!
Agree Lyn. And Bradley Byrne has had the entire weight of the GOP establishment behind hi and sits at 20%. Byrne looks like Brewer in ‘78 – perceived frontrunner who did not make the runoff. The question now is if it is James or Bentley who will make the runoff with BB – and don’t hand me Roy Moore, whose numbers have declined with every poll.
Don’t worry about Judge Moore, he’ll be fine. If Gov. Palin got 100 grand to speak at the tea party convention in Nashville, you can bet the Judge got something similar. He’ll do great on the speaking circuit after he gets run from the primary.
I’m glad to see some numbers on this race, but Tim’s people must be disappointed to see these numbers.
It’s hard to call him a frontrunner for the runoff if he can’t get in the double digits after all this time on the trail.
Moore is broke – and done. He isn’t even paying campaign staff anymore. He is a nonfactor and he will get nothing or next to it from the tea party – and if he DOES get asnything he’ll need it to repay his debt.
James does not look great but he is the closest to Bradley, and Bradley’s position as the “frontrunner” is shown to be very suspect. Alabama’s next governor is most likely James or Byrne and I’ll say James is a bit more likely right now.
James has near 100% name ID and is only pulling 8%… That’s not good.
Byrne has the entire party shilling for him – Mike Hubbard, Susan Fillipelli, Twinkle, etc. – and has 20%. That’s worse.
Bradley Byrne = Muskie
I don’t think this poll is correct.
It will be interesting to see how the James staff tries to spin this one. Obviously there is a huge percentage left up for grabs, but when you’ve been campaigning for a year longer than all the other candidates and you have outspent all your opponents, yet only have 8% to show for it, then it isn’t looking good.
But there is still a good 3 1/2 months left till the primary, so it will be interesting to see how that remaining 46% will split up.
Neither of the perceived frontrunners – Byrne & James – are electrifying the public. Both have burner lots of cash and gotten nowhere. There is a vacuum here and someone should jump in here to fill the vacuum.
Something is not making sense. Three major polling companies in the last four months have produced strikingly different results from this one. The previous three have uniformly shown Byrne running third behind James and Moore, or virtually tied with James for second place. They also uniformly showed King with a 25 to 30 percentage lead over Strange. Is this poll right and the other three wrong? Odds are this one is badly flawed. I wonder who “really” paid for it.
The poll sampled REGISTERED REPUBLICANS most people who will vote in the primary are not registered as either Democrats or Republicans. So no dobut the poll is deeply flawed
Not to mention – Who on Earth is this pollster?! It is a Montgomery outfit and a someone on this webpage stated it had done work for Byrne.
Moore swoon? Not hardly even in this poll he is in a dead heat for first. However, that mostly likely not even close to reality.
And you are going to say the guy at 8 in third place who has already spend a huge amount of money is one the frontrunners. Consider that James has already outspent everyone else running for governor by a big margin and its has given him no movement at all. And all the polls are supposed to be showing that. Most likely James spends and spends and its get him nowhere.
But to say a swoon has begun for anyone – you need the same poll to show a decline form early poll figure and better yet more than one showing the same.
The Luther for Attorney General song or Troy Boy (http://nallforgovernor.blogspot.com/2008/07/audio-troy-king-on-dale-jackson.html).
There is a Democratic Party, unless the Riley-King catfight has distracted you to such an end…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS1XDHAJ4gM
The Luther for Attorney General song or Troy Boy (http://nallforgovernor.blogspot.com/2008/07/audio-troy-king-on-dale-jackson.html).
There is a Democratic Party, unless the Riley-King catfight has distracted you to such an end… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS1XDHAJ4gM
Oh no…double post, apologies to Doc. It’s like my comments are the Ron Sparks campaign, just recycle the Sigleman Ideas from 1998.
Princeliberty, you must not have read the poll very well… it was conducted of LIKELY REPUBLICAN voters. Further, check the disclosures, this firm hasn’t ever worked for Byrne.
princeliberty is only happy if roy moore leads a poll.
the worst news is for james. wow. campaigning for almost 2 years it seems – spent millions of his own money – and for what? he is going no where fast.
10 you could say the same for Byrne. He’s at 20 after getting everybody in the party heirarchy on his side. AND he was a statewide JC chancellor with a plum position for increasing name ID for two years. Byrne’s position is not good either.
Truth is that no one will move until the TV ads start runnning.
And Pliberty Roy Moore will never be governor – that’s why he is raising zilch in state. His numbers will never go up. And they haven’t.
I strongly sense at this point that Bradley Byrne does not connect with voters. Byrne has no charisma, no star quality. He’s a classic example of a guy that is hand-picked and trotted out – and is booed by the disappointed throngs.
One thing to keep in mind is that there is no party registration in Alabama. The polling firm worked with a nationally respected voter modelling operation, Braynard and Associates, to come up with their sample pool, and they screened the callers by asking if they were likely to vote in the Republican Primary.
The only thing that was missing was any talk of issues or where the candidates go from here and how they get there. Essentially, this is a name ID poll.
Most of the attendees I spoke to wanted to know what the motives were behind commissioning a poll with relatively little usable information.
This firm has worked for Mike Hubbard in the recent past. Mike mustered the troops together after Tim James reported $4 million, twice Byrne’s money. Bradley Byrne and Hubbard had a panic attack. A bogus poll gets trotted out. No one believes it.
Pollstar you are on to something. SOMEBODY wanted to get these particular numbers out NOW. Why HOST a LUNCHEON? Why not just release the numbers? It smells very funny.
My guess is that Byrne’s people had heard the buzz around Montgomery after the first money report. That buzz was all bad for Byrne. This was in response to that. And it is important to rememember that the consulting firm “hosting” the “luncheon” is working for Mike Hubbard RIGHT NOW.
In the end I don’t think the numbers actually help Bradley – they reinforce his image as a weak, realtively unknown ‘frontrunner.” But this may have been the best they can do. And the real story here is how quickly the GOP Establishment attempted to move to counter James’ money advantage and the negative talk about Bradley’s candidacy over the last 10 days.
My guess on the WHY? is that the PSA company wanted to generate buzz for themselves and provide a previously unavailable product (fair GOP Primary poll). Everybody wins!
IMO the poll is fairly credible because the poll sampled likely GOP voters and the results show a lot of undecideds out there (as should have been expected). As long as each candidate out-performs their current poll standing, then the poll can be described as accurate in future press releases (i.e., if James gets better than 8%).
I consider this poll to be more representative of GOP voter opinion than a poll from the other side (i.e., AEA poll).
Disclosure – I’m Facebook friends with a couple of the PSA people.
Question: If you go to the website for PSA it says that this poll was conducted on February 3rd and 4th – and the e-mail invites went out late on FCPA disclosure day, February 1 . . .
Let me get this straight: they invited people to hear “interesting independent poll results” two days BEFORE the poll even began?
It’s odd to set yourself up to release (very publicly) poll results not only before you know what they are but BEFORE THE POLLING IS BEGUN. This sort of thing is reckless at best and at worst calls into question the motivations of the poll.
Very strange and worthy of some further investigation on several fronts.
Just because the invites were sent out before the poll was conducted doesn’t mean anything, other than they wanted to give people enough time to plan to attend. I love how people hiding behind anonymous names are trying to make a big deal out of nothing.
For what it is worth, Baselice (“Baseless” to Texas detractors) has a reputation as a “push poller.” See below cut from a Texas blog about the TX governor’s race, polling Rick Perry vs. Kay Bailey Hutchinson:
“I called up one of my friends in Kay’s camp to get his read on the poll…according to my source, Baselice’s survey was basically just a glorified push poll, and respondents were only asked who they were going to vote for in the March primary after they were fed a bunch of negative information about Kay (for example, misleading statements about her vote on healthcare reform).
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Baselice may be screwing with his numbers in order to artificially inflate Rick’s support. A Baselice poll from earlier this summer (which, like this one, was also subsequently ‘leaked’), showed Kay slightly ahead of Rick, 45% to 39% (that was a huge deal at the time – most other polls were showing Kay with a huge lead). As it turned out though, in that poll Baselice had used the titles of “Senator” And “Governor” for half the respondents he surveyed (in other words, he asked some respondents whether they planned to vote for “Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison” or “Governor Rick Perry,” as opposed to just “Kay Bailey Hutchison” or “Rick Perry.”) Of course, titles aren’t used on the ballot, so including them in the poll tainted the results. In that poll, when titles were not included, Kay was ahead of Rick 47% to 36%. When titles were included, Rick led Kay 43% to 42%. Baselice averaged those two totals to weaken Kay’s numbers.
I would love to take this latest poll seriously, if for no other reason than to have a good idea of where the race stands right now. But before anyone can do that, Baselice needs to release the questions he asked his respondents before he asked them whether they planned to vote for Rick or Kay. If the people on the other end of the phone were just fed a bunch of negative information about Kay, and then asked who they were going to vote for on March 2nd, this poll can’t be considered reliable.
And even if that’s not the case, why did Baselice choose to poll the weekend before Christmas? Weekend numbers are unreliable enough, and December 19-21, of all dates? I would be a lot more comfortable looking at numbers from a weekday poll taken outside the holiday season…”
Here’s another snapshot of strange math from pollster Baselice in Texas. In the case cited, his testimony was thriown out. After reading this snippet, there no doubt as to why:
“Hartnett, R-Dallas, ruled as irrelevant testimony by a Republican pollster who used calculations to project Heflin’s margin of victory.
Michael Baselice, an Austin-based pollster, testified Friday as an expert witness for Heflin.
Heflin’s lawyers said he would win by five votes, based on their analysis of 91 ballots cast by allegedly ineligible voters who have been willing to reveal their votes.
Baselice used a mathematical analysis, known as extrapolation, to determine that Heflin’s margin of votes would increase when applied to the remaining 250 potentially illegal ballots that were cast and counted.
“It’s a projection of a known quantity,” Baselice said. “It gives us an idea about how these may end up.”
Under cross-examination, Baselice acknowledged that what he did was “nothing more than middle school math.” He also said that he knew nothing about the votes, other than the percentage breakdown Heflin’s lawyers gave him.”
FWIW, I believe I could find negative accounts about almost any pollster on a blog somewhere.
And that cuts both ways. The Texas Observer says, “[Baselice] has a reputation for calling races accurately.”
A blog at the Dallas Morning News says, “Baselice has a solid reputation as a good pollster.”
Here it says, “Baselice has a near impeccable reputation as a pollster,” and also here, “I’ve long respected Baselice as one of the best.”
He does work for the Austin Chamber of Commerce.
He reads to blind widows. Volunteers in a leper colony. Crochets socks for newborns at the hospital.
Sorry, I got carried away.
Back to the original point… I’m sure there’s a point here… maybe it’s that folks here and on other blogs are often eager to discredit poll results, sometimes with reason, sometimes not. Let’s try to see the whole picture.
And at 46% undecided, I see a lot of opportunity for a lot of candidates.
Danny I would agree that you can show a lot of different views by citing blogs. And info is power, so I don’t think it’s bad at all to show published info that is out there. I would also contend that even reputable honest pollsters sometimes spin numbers for a paying client – and that does NOT mean that was done here at all. The bottom line is that all polls are educated guesses, and the best way to gauge accuracy early is by preponderence of evidence.
16% of Ron Paul supporters planning to pull the lever for Bradley Byrne?
As the former Alabama Ron Paul Media Coordinator, that number looks pretty bizarre to me. Of the thousands of Paul supporters I know in Alabama, I don’t know a one who would consider pulling the lever for Byrne.
Page 11 here: http://www.mypublicstrategy.com/media/poll.pdf
Stepen, did you see – according to this poll – that twice as many Ron Paul supporters in this poll consider themselves “moderate/liberals” as “strongly conservative” or “somewhat conservative?” That’ll certainly shock the Alabama Republican Assembly . . .
Why there is so much “shoot the messenger” about this poll:
The front runner Bradley Byrne ONLY has 20%.
The long time campaigner and BIG spender Tim James only has 8%.
Roy Moore has TOPPED out at 17%.
The MINOR candidates are in striking distance of a runoff
OPPORTUNITY exists for a new candidate to jump in near the top of the list.
Actually, if you go the poll itself not the summary of the poll. Check it out in the National Journal. It clearly states registered Republicans were polled. And these are likely voters out of the pool of registered Republicans.
And James “rebutted” this poll with his own
showing Moore at 26, Tim at 18 and Byrne at 17.
So Tim admits Moore is ahead.
Prince, they may say registered Republicans, but as someone who works trying to find out who will vote in what primary I can assure that there is no such creature.
That is why they brought in this Braynard crowd to help them model their likely Republican Primary voter pool.
Pliberty Moore has been at around 25-30% in a half-dozen polls, with this one as the only exception to that. And this is the only poll that has Byrne leading – many have him third.
Moore won’t win, but he is more than likely ahead at the moment. But he has no real chance – he can’t beat anyone in a runoff.
JD is right on the money…a huge opportunity exists for the right person to strike in the GOP primary.
Indy you are right. If there was ever a time for a late entry this is the year.
Stephen – it was too small of a sample of Ron Paul voters (47 respondents) to definitely say that 16% of Paul voters also chose Byrne. We’d have to poll a much higher sample of Paul voters to get a more accurate number.
On another note, I find it interesting that some of the gubernatorial campaigns are hammering our results on the gov race, but think we’re pretty accurate on AG & Pres 2012. How can one question on our poll be wrong but the others correct when all the data came from the same sample… Just something to consider.
Did anyone on any post above say they thought the AG/presidential numbers were accurate?
Are there more than 47 Ron Paul voters?
Troy King is on his way out by these numbers. Roy Moore is doing very well considering the field of candidates.