Gazette’s election poll results are in: Go vote

Results of the Cape Gazette’s two-week, 17-question online survey regarding the races and issues of the upcoming election can be seen in the paper’s 2016 Election Guide featured in the Friday, Oct. 28 edition of the paper. A free PDF is also available on CapeGazette.com’s 2016 Election page.

While the results aren’t scientific, said Paul Brewer, the paper is the only one conducting a poll specific to the area, so the results count for something.

Brewer, research director at the University of Delaware Center for Political Communication, said the problem with a survey like the Cape Gazette’s is that it can’t properly mirror the population. Because respondents could vote more than once, it’s possible someone could skew the results, he said.

“The online readership of the Cape Gazette is unrepresentative of the voting public,” he said. “It’s like randomly standing on a street corner and asking people as they walk by.”

The center has conducted a number of representative telephone surveys through the election cycle. In a poll conducted Sept. 16-28, 900 registered Delaware voters were interviewed by landline and cell phone.

One poll showed Democratic candidate John Carney ahead of Republican candidate Colin Bonini, 57 percent to 25 percent, in the gubernatorial race. Another poll found Democratic candidate Lisa Blunt Rochester ahead of Republican Hans Reigle, 46 percent to 26 percent, in the race for U.S. Representative.

The Cape Gazette’s survey, which ran from Sept. 30 to Oct. 17, gathered 797 online responses, and while they were not gathered scientifically, the results in those two races were similar to the center’s. In the gubernatorial race, 57 percent of respondents said Carney would get their vote, while Bonini got 39 percent. In the U.S. representative race, Blunt Rochester received 56 percent to Reigle’s 39 percent.

For the local races, incumbents and Republicans led the way in the Gazette’s polls.

For the issue-based questions, 56 percent of the paper’s online survey were in favor of legalizing marijuana in Delaware; 70 percent said there are crimes when the death penalty is appropriate; 82 percent said Route 1’s infrastructure needs will never be met; 72 percent said the federal government should continue to pay for beach replenishment; and 71 percent said there is too much construction east of U.S. 113.

As for party affiliation, Brewer and other pollsters don’t take it into account when conducting their research.

“If the sample for the poll is demographically representative, it should already accurately reflect the percentages of Republicans, Democrats and independents in the public,” said Brewer.

He pointed to a 2012 article by the Pew Research Center, which said all of their surveys are statistically adjusted to represent the proper proportion of Americans in different regions of the country – younger and older Americans; whites, African Americans and Hispanics; and the correct share of adults who rely on cell phones as opposed to landline phones.

These are all known demographics, and relatively stable characteristics of the population that can be verified from U.S. Census Bureau data or other high-quality government data sources, the Pew Research article states.

The center calls party identification another thing entirely.

“Most fundamentally, it is an attitude, not a demographic,” the article states. “To put it simply, party identification is one of the aspects of public opinion that our surveys are trying to measure, not something that we know ahead of time like the share of adults who are African American, female, or who live in the South.”

Regardless of the survey or survey results, Brewer said voters need to get out and vote.

“Our democracy is not based on poll results, it’s based on votes,” he said. “Polls have been wrong.”

Look for a sample ballot with all the presidential, statewide and local races in the Friday, Nov. 4 edition of the Cape Gazette.