Civitas Polling and Policy Watch

Policy Watch decided to try and discredit our polling with a post. What they did was call our attention to the disclaimer at the bottom of our releases which we did not update after the 2010 election (Which by the way Civitas correctly polled on an overwhelming number of the competitive legislative seats). We did a little housecleaning and have updated our disclaimer to explain how we select our universe of people to poll. Here is the corrected information: “…For purposes of this study, voters interviewed had to have voted in at least one of the past three general elections (2006, 2008, 2010) or be newly registered to vote since November 2, 2010. “

After confirming with our great pollster, National Research, Inc., that we in fact were getting all of the 2008 voters we decided to thank Policy Watch for their help.

Our organization and our pollster agreed that starting in 2011, we would be looking at 2012 turnout models, which include “one-time only” 2008 voters.   We will continue this methodology through the 2012 elections.   Unfortunately, we neglected to update the language that explains this in our press release.  We’ve since corrected that.   

We appreciate Policy Watch giving us the opportunity to further publicize our poll results, which show President Obama and Governor Perdue struggling in NC.   Our polling trends match the same trends shown by other pollsters, including Democratic public pollsters, that also show the President and Governor with low job approval and favorability numbers. We thank the Policy Watch folks for helping to publicize our results.  We understand that in their alarm over the message, they are attempting to shoot the messenger. But with so many pollsters and organizations showing such similar results, Policy Watch is in for a busy few months.

A quick look at the party registration breakdown in our current poll shows that we have a slightly higher percentage of DEMOCRATS in the survey than had actually voted in the 2008 Presidential Election.  We are shocked, shocked (!) that Policy Watch  failed to mention this. But then again, they don’t like the implications for liberal candidates if these trends hold through 2012.