Lies, Damn Lies And Indiana Senate Polls

I've met Richard Mourdock  a few times and believe strongly that if elected by Indiana voters on Tuesday, he will be a great addition to the US Senate. Because of his conservative positions and because he is a truly decent person. We need more of those in Washington.

Mourdock must be scaring the progressives because they are going after him with full guns blazing.


A few weeks ago, they went after Mourdock by twisting what he said about abortion and rape, today they are trying another approach, demoralizing his support with a bogus poll. Except that wont work either.

Left wing  political columnist Brian Howey has released a poll showing Joe Donnelly ahead of Richard Mourdock by 11 points.  Today Mourdock released a poll showing himself with a two point lead and Rasmussen released a poll showing showing Donnelly with a 3 point lead.  Real Clear Politics and most pundits call the race a toss-up so --Howey's poll is a major outlier.


HooserAccess reveals other questionable results from Howey’s polling sample which throws the entire poll into question.

• His poll shows a tie for support of gay marriage (things can always shift, but this is Indiana)

• His poll shows overwhelming support for the decriminalization of marijuana (again, this is Indiana, not California and definitely not one of several more liberal swing states where decriminalization has failed)

• His poll used random dialing instead of calling the actual numbers of registered voters (only registered voters matter on election day)

• His poll called on a Sunday (likely under-sampled conservatives)

• His poll used an unclear method of screening voters (plenty of people have opinions, but you can only count on likely voters to matter on election day)

Howey’s narrative has been clear since before the primary: he supports Dick Lugar and will criticize Richard Mourdock with every chance he gets. It’s not meant as an insult to say so, it’s just an observation of nearly every story that Howey has written about the Indiana Senate race. Yes, Howey did use a pollster who is well-respected for both polls, but pollsters only call when they are told to call and only call the people they are told to call.Let’s not forget that Howey and this same pollster showed Mourdock off by 10 points in the spring.

Howey pollster, Christine Matthews sent out a tweet  which seemed to back away from the reported results.

Apparently Brian Howey scrambled together a conference call this morning to defend his weighted poll data, but said he won't release the original, unweighted data and cross tabs, after all if there's anything a progressive hates...its transparency.