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January 17, 2008

Why did KATU include Giuliani and not Edwards???

In the two polls I wrote about previously, Washington and Oregon, Rudy Giuliani was one of four Republicans included while John Edwards was not one of the two Democrats included.

Why did Survey USA include Giuliani but not Edwards? Was it at the request of KATU who commissioned the polls?

I crunched some numbers this morning to see how these two candidates were received by voters prior to the polls:

New Hampshire:

Edwards: 48,681 = 17% of 287,322 (votes, % won, total cast)

Giuliani: 20,395 = 8.5% of 238,548 (votes, % won, total cast)

Iowa:

Edwards: 30% of 220,000 (final %, estimated Party turnout)

Giuliani: 3.5% of 124,000 (final %, estimated Party turnout)

Grand Totals:

Edwards: 114,681 voters

Giuliani: 24,735 voters (89,946 fewer than Edwards)

Clearly, viability was not the criteria used in these polls!!

The Iowa caucuses are obviously not a straightforward number, unlike the NH vote. For Iowa I went with the estimated turnout and the official final votes and extrapolated from there.

By ANY measure Edwards has proven to be a vastly more viable candidate thus far than Giuliani has. Yet he was omitted from the two KATU polls and Giuliani was included.

WTF???

Posted by Kevin at January 17, 2008 09:08 AM