Shira in the Monitor:
A couple of new polls out this week: NowHamp-shire.com/Populus Research polled 646 likely general election voters, 39 percent registered Republicans and 32 percent registered Democrats. In a generic Republican vs. Democratic matchup for Congress, the Republican won, 56 to 44 percent. Hodes lost to an unnamed Republican, 39 to 54 percent, with 9 percent unsure. The poll didn't match up Hodes with either of his potential Republican rivals, Ayotte or Lamontagne.
Another Populus poll found that 63 percent of likely voters in New Hampshire oppose instituting an income tax to balance the budget.
One caution: Populus Research is run by Steve DeMaura, a former state Republican leader.
Actually, there are several cautions about Populus Research, so many that I am surprised it would even get mentioned in the Monitor.
* Let's start with the one explicitly mentioned by Shira - that Populus is run by Steve DeMaura. I think former NHGOP Executive Director Steve's Twitter page pretty much says it all about Populus Research.And if you need more, a glance at Populus' "In the News" page says more.
* The second one is also mentioned by Shira: with "39 percent registered Republicans and 32 percent registered Democrats," I don't know what state DeMaura is polling, but it sure isn't New Hampshire. More like GOP Wishful Thinking Hampshire. This point alone makes the poll junk.
* Populus relies on automated IRV technology to do their polling. While they certainly aren't the only outfit to do so, it's also the case that the NYT, WaPo, the AP, and ABCNews refuse to report polls conducted with IRV.
* The sample is too small, and there's no description of the demographic or geographic data, or whether they even bothered with those details.
* DeMaura's partisan polls are premiered and pushed by Patrick Hynes' pretend "news" site, NowHampshire. Here is one egregious example of how NowHampshire operates as a disguised GOP spin funnel.
Now, this is the part where Kevin Landrigan or someone will put on the false equivalence hat and say, "Now wait just a minute! Markos Moulitsas, the Great Orange Satan Himself, commissions polls that Mean Liberal Bloggers on the web log Blue New Hampshire put all over their site. So, A-HA!"
Yes. Those would be polls Markos commissions from Research 2000, a reality-based non-partisan polling outfit that always does a superb job with sampling and demographics. So good that the Concord Monitor themselves use them for polling.
Oh, and then there's that BH isn't pretending to be an online news site while it pushes GOP spin. We are honestly partisan here.
It's bad enough that in NH we constantly have to deal with the demographic and sampling issues of UNH, and the opacity of ARG. The last thing this state needs is a Republican partisan polling outfit the purpose of which seems to be to create pro-GOP momentum spin rather than accurately report voter opinion.
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