on the toll road plan<\/a> proposed by Governor Corzine was released today.<\/p>\nOur findings paint a slightly different picture from the poll released by the Bergen Record on Monday. This follows presidential primary polls where our polls differed as well. Herb Jackson did a pretty good job summing up the differences in methodology on his election blog, so I\u2019ll just focus on the toll road polls here.<\/p>\n
The Record poll, which is conducted by Research 2000 in Maryland, found 42% in favor of the plan, 52% opposed, and 6% with no opinion. The Monmouth\/Gannett poll found only 15% in favor, 56% opposed, and 29% with no opinion. So, what\u2019s up with that?<\/p>\n
One of the key differences in assessing public reaction to the toll road plan is the way the questions were worded in the two polls. The Record\u2019s poll described the plan as \u201creining in New Jersey\u2019s public debt load by imposing a series of 50 percent toll hikes\u2026Proceeds of bonds backed by the future revenue increases would be used to retire debt and fund new road improvements.\u201d Our poll described it as a \u201cplan to raise tolls about 50 percent every four years over the next 14 years in order to reduce state debt and fund transportation projects.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Record wording started off by emphasizing \u201creining in debt\u201d while ours started with the cost issue. We also spelled out a time frame for the toll hikes. The Record\u2019s poll asked respondents whether they \u201cstrongly favor, favor, oppose, or strongly oppose.\u201d Our poll asked \u201cdo you favor or oppose this plan, or do you have no opinion?\u201d<\/p>\n
This may all seem a bit esoteric for the casual poll watcher, but in the short time frame after the toll plan was released (although it has been spoken about for months), question wording and response option choices can matter. Each poll started interviewing the day after Corzine\u2019s State of the State address, but the Record completed interviewing in two days, while the Monmouth\/Gannett poll interviewed for five days.<\/p>\n
Differences in question wording, as in this case, are valid choices made by pollsters as ways to tap what the public is really thinking and it is incumbent upon us not to \u201ccreate\u201d opinion by phrasing questions that are far removed from the experiences and discussions of the typical resident.<\/p>\n
And we have to be fair in the way we word the questions. Most \u201cfavor or oppose\u201d questions are just that. The pollster will only record a \u201cno opinion\u201d response if the respondent insists. On this issues, I heard from a number of plan supporters that they believed many members of the public wouldn\u2019t care about this plan since they don\u2019t drive the toll roads. So, it made sense to explicitly include the \u201cno opinion\u201d option in the question we used.<\/p>\n
But that alone doesn\u2019t explain the differences between the two polls\u2019 results. There are some interesting demographic differences in the poll breakdowns. In the Record poll, Democrats support the plan by a 62%-32% margin while Republicans reject it by 81%-17%. Independents reject it by a slimmer 55%-39% margin. In our poll, residents of all partisan stripes rejected the plan, including Democrats (48%-19%), Republicans (68%-9%) and independents (57%-16%).<\/p>\n
There appears to be some serious difference in the Democrats interviewed by the Record and those interviewed by us. The Record poll\u2019s sample was comprised of 600 New Jerseyans who reported they generally vote in state elections and are likely to vote this November. Our poll was composed of 804 New Jersey adult residents. [Side note: As a matter of standard procedure, the Monmouth\/Gannett poll prefers full population samples when polling about issues that affect all residents, whether they vote or not.]<\/em><\/p>\nDoes this mean that Governor Corzine does better among people who will go out to vote when (and if) he runs for re-election? Well, not necessarily. When we drilled down our sample to the most likely group of voters, we found that opinion of the plan stood at 16% favor, 58% oppose, and 26% no opinion \u2013 nearly identical to our results for the general population.<\/p>\n
Aside from the type of sample used by each poll (likely voter vs. adult population), there are some key differences in how the surveys are weighted. We use weighting techniques make sure our surveys are representative of the population on region of state, gender, age, education and race.<\/p>\n
One thing we don\u2019t use in our weighting is party identification. Party ID is an attitude that is subject to change, unlike hard demographic data (unless of course you\u2019re planning on a sex change operation). Most media pollsters ask something along the lines of: \u201cIn politics today, do you consider yourself a Democrat, Republican or independent?\u201d.<\/p>\n
A major difference between the two polls is our party breakdowns. Our full population sample in this poll identified itself as 37% Dem, 22% Rep \u2013 we are pretty a blue state \u2013 and 41% independent. The Bergen Record poll\u2019s party-self identification is 28% Dem, 14% Rep, and 58% independent.<\/p>\n
While New Jersey\u2019s electorate is pretty fickle, it\u2019s not that independent. Interestingly, the Bergen Poll party numbers roughly correspond to the party registration figures on the state\u2019s official election rolls. However, as anyone of who has run a campaign in New Jersey knows, a good number of those \u201cunaffiliated\u201d voters consistently vote either Dem or Rep in general elections. You unaffiliateds who are party-line voters know who you are! They are only unaffiliated because they haven\u2019t bothered to vote in one of New Jersey\u2019s typically non-competitive primaries (making turnout projections for this year\u2019s presidential primary that much more interesting).<\/p>\n
The problem is if you weight the party preference question (\u201cwhat do you consider yourself today?\u201d) to the party split in the voter registration books for New Jersey \u2013 and I\u2019m not saying this is what Research 2000 did \u2013 you\u2019re mixing apples and oranges.<\/p>\n
I have some more thoughts (and data) on weighting poll results by party ID. But it\u2019s been a long week, so I\u2019ll leave that for another post.<\/p>\n
Drive safely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wasn’t sure whether to call this entry “Taking a Poll on Tolls” or “Taking a Toll on Polls”. A Monmouth University\/Gannett New Jersey Poll on the toll road plan proposed by Governor Corzine was released today. Our findings paint a slightly different picture from the poll released by the Bergen Record on Monday. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":939,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40802236386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/939"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802236386"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802237166,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236386\/revisions\/40802237166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802236386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802236386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802236386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}