FOX Fort Wayne News just broadcast the only scientific poll of the GOP Precinct Committe Members in advance of their caucus on Saturday to select the 3rd District Congressional Candidate. It was a major undertaking but well worth the effort.
There’s a big difference between a scientific poll and the kind you see on most media outlets. A scientific poll takes a lot more work. First, it requires actively contacting a representative and randomly-selected sample of the likely voters. We had to get a list of all 500 plus Precinct Committee Members from all eight counties in the 3rd district. Elkhart County’s Republican Party refused to give us theirs. So we got that list from an anonymous source. The Republicans in the other counties were more helpful.
Next we apportioned our sample based on the number of Committee Members in each county. We knew we wanted a total of 125 members spread across the eight counties in order to get a reasonable margin of error.
FOX Fort Wayne News Reporter Daniel Woodruff did the lion’s share of the calling. He recruited other members of the staff to help.
The poll revealed that Marlin Stutzman led with a sizeable 37 percent. “Undecided” was next with 30 percent. Stutzman can only lose if a majority of those go with another candidate. But anything is possible.
Other media outlets have used online polling. There are several reasons that those polls mean nothing. First, anyone can vote — not just Committee Members. And only Committee Members will be making the decision on Saturday. Second, anyone can vote any number of times. That means participants can effectively “stuff the ballot box” in the online polls. And third, these online polls can’t even guess at a margin of error. So you can’t know how much you can rely on them.
If other media outlets were honest, they would confess all these facts when they present the results of their online “poll.” But they hope you won’t know the difference. It’s another reason why FOX Fort Wayne should be your choice for accurate information. We’ll let you know when a poll is scientific, and when it isn’t.
The FOX Fort Wayne poll of GOP Committee Members can be found at fortwaynehomepage.net