LITTLE ROCK — Arguing about polls is one of the more comical, pointless, unattractive and predictable exercises in politics.
It’s happening right now. I invite you to laugh along with me.
Roby Brock of Talk Business started it. He spent his hardearned money to hire an automated polling firm to make nearly 800 calls one day last week to take a survey of our attitudes toward the races for the U.S. Senate and governor.
An automated poll, not as expensive as one with live callers, rings you with a robot who asks you to indicate your voting preference by punching a button.
These robots tend to get about as close to the facts as human pollsters. I made fun of the robots in the beginning, but then I quit.
Brock once ran for office as a Democrat, but his reporting credibility on business and politics has never been seriously questioned. Anyway, it would do neither him nor his enterprise any good to dummy up a poll showing Mike Beebe not as far ahead of Jim Keet as everybody thought.
Why would a one-man media enterprise living off slim margins haul off and lie on the governor of the state? Somebody tell me.
No one can. He wouldn’t.
A poll produces what a poll produces. It asks. People answer It counts them up. It gives you the percentages.
In the governor’s race it said Beebe was favored by 49.5 percent of the respondents and Keet by 40.5 percent.
That was noteworthy because Beebe’s favorable ratings are stratospheric and he is considered an uncommonly overwhelming favorite to romp to a second term.
This was the first sign of something, not trouble or weakness, exactly, but thatBeebe is, after all, just a man.
Beebe’s people got all agitated. They complained about robot polls. They said something must have been askew. They said, gosh-darn, this just isn’t right.
Here’s the thing: If your reelection confidence is so fragile that a poll you don’t believe causes you consternation, then maybe you ought to worry about yourself instead of the pollster.
We’re going to vote eventually. Then we’ll know.
Keet, meantime, was ecstatic to be within nine points and said this finding was in line with his internal polls.
Let me tell you about internal polls: If you talk about them outside your campaign, then they are not internal. And if you presume to share parts of them publicly, then you ought to be prepared to substantiate them by also releasing your full questionnaire and your full demographic report and all your cross-tabs.
But that never happens, so we are left to assume the numbers are either (1) massaged or (2) plumb made up.
There’s anger out there. It’s against incumbents. In Arkansas, it’s against anyone tied in any way to Barack Obama.
In this climate, the occasional poll is going to show the Democratic governor less than invincible. That’s especially so if the poll is taken at the end of a week in which much of the publicity has been about the fact that most state constitutional officers, though not Beebe, havebeen getting free SUVs and not paying taxes on the benefits.
Always remember the mathematically tested margin for error in these polls, plus or minus 4 percentage points here.
For the record, the Reuters news service produced a poll two days ago showing Beebe leading by 22 points. Which do I believe? I believe both. Could both be accurate? Well, stretch the margins of error tight and combine them, and you’re close.
The rest is tighter screening, Brock’s “likely voters” versus Reuters’ “registered voters,” and voter volatility, I guess. I think Beebe will eventually win by more than nine points, but not by 22. So, you know, take an average and quit worrying about it.
A 54.5-45.5 spread in November wouldn’t floor me, not in this environment. And Beebe ought to be glad to get it.
Meantime, the best comedy in regard to “internal” polling comes, of course, from that laugh riot herself, U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln.
Brock’s poll, like everyone else’s, shows her getting pummeled by John Boozman - 57-32.
So she put out her own “internal” poll showing her trailing instead only by 45-36.
I have two things to say about that.
The first is that I have my own internal poll showing me within a couple of catchy phrases of winning the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
The second? After 12 years in the U.S. Senate and nearly 20 years in public office in Arkansas, Lincoln announces that she has her own poll showing that barely one in three Arkansas voters favors her. And she thinks that’s good. That’s dark comedy right there.
JOHN BRUMMETT IS A COLUMNIST FOR THE ARKANSAS NEWS BUREAU IN LITTLE ROCK.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 07/22/2010