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Wednesday, July 20, 2011
GOP Pollster Has Heinrich Leading Balderas 52-19% in US Senate Race
Magellan Data and Mapping Strategies, a well-known Republican polling outfit, today released the results of an autodial survey of 636 likely 2012 New Mexico Democratic primary voters conducted during the period July 17-18, 2011. (Wouldn't you know it? I happened to be one of those polled.) Here's how Magellan characterized the results:
The ballot test shows Congressman Martin Heinrich with 52% support, State Auditor Hector Balderas with 19%, Andres Valdez with 4% and 25% of voters are undecided. Among Hispanic voters that contribute 43% of all respondents, Martin Heinrich leads Hector Balderas 45% to 27%, with 24% undecided. The political ideology of the respondents was 17% conservative, 45% moderate and 30% liberal. Within those voter subgroups we find Hector Balderas doing better among conservative Democrats and Martin Heinrich doing well among liberal Democrats.
... In the head to head ballot test of Martin Heinrich and Hector Balderas we find little change from the three way ballot test, with Martin Heinrich again leading by 33 points, 54% to 21%. It is important to note that it is still very early in the election and the candidates are raising money, building support and beginning their campaigns.
In the one on one, Heinrich held the lead among all likely Dem primary voters, as well as among males, females, Hispanics, moderates and liberals, with margins ranging from +19% to +64%. Balderas beat Heinrich by 2 percentage posts among conservative voters.
As far as the favorable/unfavorable ratings of those surveyed:
Looking at the candidate image ratings we find Martin Heinrich with a strong image rating with 53% of respondents having a favorable opinion, 19% having an unfavorable opinion and 21% having no opinion. Martin Heinrich is the most well known of the three candidates with 93% name recognition. Hector Balderas has a 2 to 1 image ratio, with 29% having a favorable opinion of him, 15% having an unfavorable opinion, and 28% having no opinion.
Balderas had 72% name recognition among those polled. About 57% of those polled recognized the name of Andres Valdez.
Click to see the survey topline results, the cross tabs and presentation charts.
Methodology: The survey was conducted using automated telephone touch tone technology. The sample used for this survey was randomly drawn from a New Mexico voter file. The survey response data was weighted upon past voting demographics from New Mexico primary election cycles. The 636 interviews were conducted on July 17th and 18th. Three attempts were made to interview each household in the sample. This survey has a margin of error of 3.88% at the 95 percent confidence interval.
Earlier this month, a Public Policy Polling survey conducted in late June on the Senate race had Heinrich leading Balderas by a margin of 47-24% with 29% undecided.
July 20, 2011 at 09:42 AM in 2012 NM Senate Race, Hector Balderas, Polling, Rep. Martin Heinrich (NM-01) | Permalink
Comments
I was called, too. Recognizing Magellan Strategies as a Republican group, I told them I was a Republican, to see if I could monkey-wrench a bit. The computer dumped me right away. Then I realized they were polling in the Dem primary. One has to wonder why are they polling? Who is paying?
I think they are probably aggregating data for multiple purposes. One purpose is to create a super enhanced database to deploy on behalf of the Republican Coordinated campaign. Such a database will be used to micro-target Democrats for persuasion in the U.S. Senate race and the Presidential race.
The release of the "poll" is just a cover story. If you robo-poll, it is just as easy to do 20,000 calls as to do 600. I'll bet a lot of Democrats received these calls. They will continue to "poll" and collect data on pretty much the entire voting population in the state.
Hope our side is doing the something similar.
Posted by: eric | Jul 20, 2011 4:24:46 PM
I think you're right Eric. The GOP machine has this stuff down while the Dems seems stuck in the last century on data, messaging, strategies, focus groups, all of it.
Posted by: SCC | Jul 20, 2011 5:00:29 PM
I'm not so sure Dems aren't doing similar things.
It is just kind of weird that more people aren't aware of the strategies of power that are entirely legal. It is entirely legal to manipulate the information environment and to aggregate data to micro target voters.
Just imagine what Republicans can do with a comprehensive list of self-identified conservative/moderate NM Democrats who are really likely to vote in November, 2012. Think of how valuable that information will be.
The media (and DemocracyForNewMexico) report these "polls" like it is straight information the pollster is just somehow ethically obligated to put out there.
They (pollsters) are working for money (and ideology), and someone is paying them to do this. That fact is much more interesting and more important information than the numbers of their poll.
Posted by: eric | Jul 20, 2011 10:46:00 PM
