Last week I posed a Reader Question to CommonwealthMagazine and lo and behold, CW answered the question. I wondered if online polls (CW had a story on one) are reliable. And the answer, according to CW’s Steve Koczela and Rich Parr, is yes.
I recommend Koczela and Parr’s Polling, like everything else, is moving online as a careful and clear explanation about why MassInc Polling regards online polling as necessary and reliable.
MassInc also answered another Reader Question about the survey research bona fides of the firm that conducted the poll for Education Reform Now Advocacy, the dark money funder of Democrats for Education Reform Massachusetts. That leaves me with my last words about the original CW story, Kennedy holds 17-point lead over Markey in poll: “The CW story didn’t include the actual question, and the poll itself was not shared with readers. But at least we have a fuzzy horse race number for a race a year away that may not happen.”
Strike fuzzy! Koczela and Parr explained that.
Reader Question: why can only CW see the poll question, and readers cannot? Some polling questions may be biased. Another Reader Question: why can’t readers see the actual poll? Questions leading up to the horse race question could bias the response to that question.
When MassInc Polling does a public poll it publishes the instrument with top lines and cross tabs. So does Suffolk University. Good heavens, even MassFiscal does that! Granted that only subjects MassFiscal to ridicule and well-thought-out skepticism like Fact-checking new poll on voter attitudes, but it does allow readers to make a judgment about the reliability of the polls.
The CW horse race piece shells out a nugget about a question readers can’t see from a secret poll by an interest group that refuses to tell us who is really behind it. DFER has gotten away with this before, snookering the Boston Herald and the public, as I wrote in Democrats for Education Reform’s Hide and Seek Poll.
Maybe Answering Reader Questions will become a regular feature, like Dear Abby.
The Washington Post recently adopted a new slogan: “Democracy dies in darkness.” I agree.
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money (and other things). I don’t write about education.] I occasionally submit pieces to CommonWealth Magazine for publication
Great article, great links. Thank you.
I appreciate that, thank you for reading.