{"id":34644,"date":"2011-12-21T07:18:07","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T14:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=34644"},"modified":"2011-12-21T08:09:51","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T15:09:51","slug":"another-survey-sparks-debate-about-polling-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/12\/another-survey-sparks-debate-about-polling-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Another survey sparks debate about polling company"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Susana<\/a>

Gov. Susana Martinez<\/p><\/div>\n

A new survey from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling shows high approval for Gov. Susana Martinez<\/a>, but not nearly as high as a Republican poll shows, so its Tuesday release sparked another debate about PPP\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

Martinez\u2019s approval in the PPP poll was 50 percent, while 39 percent said they disapprove of the job she\u2019s doing \u2013 down only slightly from June, when she polled at 52\/37.<\/p>\n

The survey of 500 New Mexico voters was conducted from Dec. 11-13 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent.<\/p>\n

Read the poll memo here<\/a>. And there\u2019s this from PPP\u2019s blog<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cSusana Martinez continues to have some of the most impressive approval numbers in the country. We find 50% of voters approving of her to 39% who disapprove. She\u2019s only of only 11 Governors PPP has found this year with an approval at 50% or higher, and she\u2019s the most popular out of the new Republican Governors elected last fall that we\u2019ve polled on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes Martinez\u2019s numbers so noteworthy is that she\u2019s doing it as a Republican in a state that voted for Barack Obama by 15 points in 2008 and appears ready to do so again next year. In addition to universal support from Republicans, an unusually high 32% of Democrats give her good marks and independents approve of her by a 48\/38 margin as well.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

GOP fires back<\/h3>\n

On Monday, the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies released a poll<\/a> showing Martinez\u2019s approval at 65, with 29 percent disapproving of the job she\u2019s doing.<\/p>\n

So the state GOP was ready to fire when PPP came out with its poll on Tuesday:<\/p>\n

\u201cPPP admits that it was founded to conduct \u2018free\u2019 polls and then promote them in the media to \u2018counter Republicans.\u2019 Unlike credible polling firms on both sides of the aisle, the goal of PPP\u2019s robocall polls is not to accurately measure public opinion, but rather\u00a0to create public opinion\u00a0against Republicans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year, PPP has consistently skewed approval rating surveys against Republican Governors across the country to create unfavorable media stories in their states.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is clearly demonstrated by comparing the approval ratings of GOP governors in PPP polls with their approval ratings in other polls, including independent public and media polls.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile every poll has a margin of error of a few points, PPP has reported Republican approval ratings as much as\u00a028 points lower\u00a0than other surveys done at the same time.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

The GOP released a chart you can view here<\/a> that shows recent polling in seven states in which another survey (sometimes a Republican poll, sometimes a university poll) found the GOP governor more popular than did the PPP survey.<\/p>\n

From the GOP news release:<\/p>\n

\u201cHow does PPP perpetrate the fraud? Aside from using cheap robocall methodology, one blatant tactic has been to include more Democrat voters in their approval polls than is representative of the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cIronically, whenever PPP\u2019s numbers are challenged, they point to the accuracy of their surveys done before the elections in the respective state. But those pre-election polls are conducted using completely different samples.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn each of these states, PPP has significantly and indefensibly shifted the survey samples to include more Democrat voters in their job approval polls than in their election polls. Not surprisingly, the polls produce the type of anti-Republican numbers PPP is looking for.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Twitter debate ensues<\/h3>\n

I asked PPP to respond via Twitter. That sparked another public debate about PPP surveys.<\/p>\n

\u201cBill Richardson said all sorts of insulting stuff about us last year too,\u201d PPP said in one tweet<\/a>, then followed it up with \u201cNew Mexico just has unusually whiny Governor\u2019s staffs<\/a> I guess, we don\u2019t get this in other states,\u201d and \u201cGovernor Martinez is popular across the spectrum of our polling<\/a>, we don\u2019t have any Governor with an approval over 60%.\u201d<\/p>\n

State GOP Executive Director Bryan Watkins tweeted<\/a> to PPP, \u201cwe understand that you under sampled ind and GOP voters again where reputable firms have these numbers on pace with a bad GOP year.\u201d But Matt Reichbach, a former colleague of mine at The New Mexico Independent, tweeted<\/a> that he was \u201cTrying to figure out if the NM GOP doesn\u2019t understand polling or just hopes reporters who get the press release don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then he explained his three-point disagreement with the GOP: In one tweet<\/a>, \u201c1) Referring to \u2018cheap robocall methodology\u2019 2) Not mentioning difference in samples is from likely voters to registered voters,\u201d and in another<\/a>, \u201c3) Say PPP is slanted against GOP but tend to be within range of other polls (http:\/\/bit.ly\/uCF5jS<\/a>).\u201d<\/p>\n

2012 will be fascinating<\/h3>\n

At any rate, you can read more on the debate about PPP from an article I posted earlier in the week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The bottom line? New Mexico\u2019s Republican governor remains popular in a swing state where the Democratic president also remains reasonably popular<\/a>. Headed into a presidential election year, that makes New Mexico unique. 2012 is going to be fascinating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new survey from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling shows high approval for Gov. Susana Martinez, but not nearly as high as a Republican poll, so its Tuesday release sparked another debate about PPP\u2019s work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[156,240,107],"class_list":["post-34644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-2012-election","tag-polling","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}