After I quizzed the left-leaning Public Policy Polling about the organization and its surveys last week, two other media outlets joined in with their own posts.
Capitol Report New Mexico posted an article questioning whether there is “something funny going on” with Public Policy Polling’s work in New Mexico. From the article:
“Republicans often cry foul when PPP numbers show GOP candidates and issues in less than favorable light — that’s natural in the zero-sum game of politics. But conservatives complain that PPP surveys aren’t just snapshots of elections and issues but, rather, an attempt to advance talking points to try to shape opinion and influence the media.
“‘They’re not so much a polling organization as they are a group of people trying to establish a narrative,’ one statewide Republican official who preferred not to have his name used told Capitol Report New Mexico this week.”
Capitol Report said Martinez had a 57 percent approval rating among Hispanics in one PPP survey but, six days later, was at 51 percent.
The New Mexico Telegram countered with an explanation for that, however:
“First of all, the topline of the poll in question was not Martinez’s approval ratings, but rather if Martinez’s presence on the Republican ticket would help Mitt Romney in New Mexico against Barack Obama.
“The answer was no.
“Secondly, the anonymous Republican fails to realize that the numbers in the second poll are from a much smaller sample size — and therefore have a much larger margin of error. The second poll was of 526 New Mexico voters — only 38 percent of whom were Hispanics. This means the sample size in the Hispanics in the second poll is just 200 (rounded up from 199.8) — and would as such have a much higher margin of error.”
There’s lots more. Read Capitol Report’s article here and the New Mexico Telegram’s analysis here.