Posted on 09/02/2011 9:18:19 AM PDT by Al B.
Fox News released its first poll Thursday since Rick Perry's entry into the presidential race, showing the Texas governor drawing 26 percent of the GOP primary vote and leading Mitt Romney by 8 points.
What caught one reader's attention, though, wasn't the size of Perry's lead, but the name of Fox's Republican pollster: Shaw & Company Research, a Texas-based firm that conducts the Fox survey in cooperation with the Democratic pollster Anderson Robbins Research. Continue Reading
The Shaw in Shaw & Company is Daron Shaw, a University of Texas political science professor and veteran of several GOP campaigns, whose name has been in the news a bit lately.
That's because Shaw is one of the starring players in Sasha Issenberg's e-book, "Rick Perry and His Eggheads: Inside the Brainiest Political Operation in America," which details a groundbreaking set of experiments that Shaw and three other academics conducted inside Perry's 2006 reelection campaign.
The Perry campaign allowed the so-called eggheads to run tests on "anything [they] could figure out how to randomize, from lawn signs to television ads," Issenberg writes, and they assembled a provocative set of findings on which kinds of campaign tactics really work.
Fast forward five years and Perry is running for president and Shaw is one of the lead pollsters for the most influential cable network, by far, among GOP primary voters.
Shaw told me this morning that there's no conflict of interest involved, since he wasn't paid by Perry for the campaign experiments and "because we're stupid, we never entered into any business relationship with Perry."
Nor, he said, was his role to advise Perry's reelection bid on strategy: "We'd just present the results and then the Perry people would do want they want."
Shaw was an analyst on the 1992 George H. W. Bush reelection campaign and the 2000 George W. Bush campaign. He and his Democratic counterpart, Chris Anderson, took over the Fox News poll earlier this year, but Shaw has been on the decision desk for the network going back to the 2002 cycle.
Though he has worked in political consulting, Shaw said he doesn't take federal or gubernatorial clients so as to avoid "even the appearance of a conflict of interest."
Taking a chance that someone wants to have a real discussion in the thread —
The two questions are fundamentally different. The one question is about who you like the BEST of all the candidates. The other is a question about who you would not want to BE a candidate.
For example, the 26% who preferred Perry first might also be happy with Bachmann if Perry falls out. And they might also like Cain, or some other candidate. Likewise, the people supporting other candidates might also be OK with Perry should their preferred candidate be gone.
So saying 74% did not choose Perry as their first choice is not at all the same as saying that 74% do not want Sarah Palin in the race.
And of course, that second question isn’t even about supporting a candidate. I bet some of the 74% who don’t want Palin in would support her if she looked like she could win — the reason for not wanting her in the race might not have ANYTHING to do with if they like her or not. That’s why that question is silly.
I’ve always thought the best polling would be to ask both “who is your first choice”, and “who would you never vote for”. That would be more revealing than “do you want someone to run or not”.
Palin isn't actually RUNNING in this race. Until she enters the race, she can't win. If she enters the race, then we'll see if she can't be elected.
GRRRRREAT thread! Thanks to all posters.
I like the way Bachmann debates...she is fearless, and she sticks to her guns. Then I always smile when they all step out on the stage in a line and you see what an itty-bitty cute thing she is!
She can run circles around The Mitten.
Perry had better not be too fierce with her. Remember what happened when Pawlenty bullied Michelle!
Perry will be exposed in time, not to worry
BTTT.
Your point is well taken.
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