So, it appears that, despite the happy talk from Joe Conway about the Siena Polls yesterday, Dean Skelos is not happy with the results. What to do? Attack the pollster, apparently.
"I don't believe the Sienna poll is correct and we have our own internal polling that polls that have been done within all of these different district within the past 20 years that indicate a lot different," Skelos said.
"You know, they use the random digit dialing. Sienna has never done a poll in a senate districts and random digit dialing, for all you know, all the phone calls could've gone into Great Neck."
First, as I have already said, I don't believe that the methodology on these polls is bulletproof. One could conceivably make a reasonable critique of a number of factors. But, that's not what Dean did. He stated as fact that Siena was using "random digit dialing" in an effort to discredit the results, results he's obviously not happy with. It was an odd tack to take, to say the least. The problem is that he's absolutely 100% wrong. (Either he just pulled that one out of his rear end or he's deliberately trying to be misleading. You choose.)
Azi talked to Steven Greenberg at Siena:
I just got off the phone with Siena pollster Steven Greenberg who said Siena "does not use random-digit dialing to conduct it's statewide or senate district polls." He also said steps are taken to ensure "appropriate geographic disbursement" within polling areas. Greenberg said, "We call off voter lists."
So a day after Skelos sent Conway out to spin the Siena polls as much as possible even though the consensus opinion by pretty much the entire statewide media was that the polls show that Dean's strategy of playing offense and telling folks that they would actually pick up seats this year was essentially DOA, he decided to just make stuff up about the pollster to discredit the results.
Did he really think the folks at Siena were just going to let him do that? |
