Republicans are abuzz with the latest news from New Hampshire: former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown is leading incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen 49-44 in the latest poll.
Thankfully, we haven't seen any headlines from legitimate news sources touting the poll as a new development in the race. Yeah, Newsmax had one, but then again we said "legitimate" news sources. And even they qualified it with questions about the accuracy of the poll. Good for them.
We can't 100% know that the poll is bad, but we can be pretty sure. The reason is that it tells us the opposite of what so many other polls are saying. Our polling average puts Sen. Shaheen at about 10 points ahead of Brown; Real Clear Politics is a little more generous toward Brown, showing Sen. Shaheen eight points up. The problem with lending credence to this new poll is that it tells the opposite story of what so many other polls are saying. In other words, for this poll to be accurate, all the other polls would have to be, on average, 13 points off.
We've got other questions for whoever conducted this poll, mostly about methodology. The results released were very sparse: we know how the questions were worded, that the sample was 600 likely voters, and that the poll was conducted over two days in the middle of March. But that's really it. We don't know how the sample was obtained: whether they called cellphones as well as land lines (and if so, how many responses were by cellphone); whether they asked to speak to a specific member of the household or just polled the first person to pick up the phone; whether they called back if there was no response, etc. These can all have fairly large effects on the results: for example, young people disproportionately have fewer land lines and only have a cellphone. They also happen to disproportionately vote Democratic. A poll that only calls land lines skips over this demographic. Importantly, this poll was also commissioned by the Republican Governor's Association and conducted by an anonymous firm. We don't mean to say that partisan polls can always be discounted; however, when reading them you should remember that partisan polls can be influenced by the motives or agenda of the party.
So the poll isn't a story on its own. We could be wrong about what it says about New Hampshire: if more polls start coming out showing a close race or a Brown lead, there's a story there. But that's the thing about polls: trends are stories, not polls by themselves. And right now, it's the word of one poll against at least five others. We're sticking with our original story about New Hampshire for now, in spite of the latest numbers.
But there's one real effect this poll could have, and it's related to the fact that it was commissioned by a party. If it turns out that the correlation between the cost and competitiveness of a race is caused by the tendency of donors to give to closer elections, then this poll is excellent news for Brown--not because it indicates a surge in popularity, but because it's a signal to Republican donors. If donors see him as a loser, they're probably not going to waste their money in New Hampshire. But if donors think he has a real shot at this seat, they'll believe that their dollars matter more, and Sen. Brown can watch the money roll right in.
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