A Dumb Poll

By Art Gallagher

Fairleigh Dickinson University released a PublicMind poll this morning that indicates that U.S. Senator Robert Menendez would beat bio-tech entrepreneur John Crowley in a hypothetical matchup for the U.S. Senate election that will happen next year by a margin of 45%-26%.

50% of the respondents have never heard of Menendez. 

The Hudson County Democrat first went to the Senate in 2006 to complete Jon Corzine’s term after Corzine became governor.  He was elected to his own term over State Senator Tom Kean, JR the following November.  Prior to being appointed to the U.S. Senate by Corzine, Menendez represented the 13th congressional disrict in the House of Representatives for 15 years.

50% of the voters don’t know Menendez.   The conclusion of the poll should be that the PublicMind is empty.

84% of the respondents said they never heard of Crowley.  Why would they?  He’s a private citizen who has never run for office.  He is an impressive figure, to those who have heard of him.  He was written up in the Wall Street Journal eight years ago and there was a movie, Extraordinary Measures, starring Harrison Ford about his efforts to find a cure to a disease that inflicts his children.   Brendan Fraser played Crowley in the movie.

Extraordinary Measures was not exactly a blockbuster.  It didn’t make Crowley a celebrity.   Maybe if FDU polled Menendez against Fraser it would have been a closer poll.  Maybe not.  If they polled Menendez against George of the Jungle or Dudley D0-Right, film characters Fraser played in the 90’s, it might have been closer.

Menendez outperformed Crowley so handily in the PublicMind Poll released today because he was identified in the questions as the incumbent and as a Democrat.   If the question had been, “Who do you favor for U.S. Senate in 2012, Robert Menendez or John Crowely?” without identifying Menendez’s status as incumbent or either man’s party affiliation, the results would have been very different.

If FDU PublicMind follows their usual pattern, they will shortly release match ups between Menendez and other GOP potential contenders for the 2012 U.S. Senate race.   The polling was done between May 16 and 22.  They release the data and their conclusions piecemeal. 

With the exception of polls that rate the executive, the President and the Governor, the conclusion will most always be that the public is not paying attention.

MMM demonstrated that conclusion in March when we conducted person on the street interviews to see if members of the public could possibly care about “continuity of representation,” the abstraction that Rutgers professor and legislative map selector Alan Rosenthal invented to justify gerrymandering. 

We repost the video of those interviews today for your amusement and dismay:

Posted: May 31st, 2011 | Author: Art Gallagher | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: FDU Poll, John Crowley, Robert Menendez | 2 Comments »

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