(Lansing, MI) – A new poll from Mitchell Research shows progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed has a ten-point lead in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate. El-Sayed has 27-percent support, Congresswoman Haley Stevens has 18-percent, and state Senator Mallory McMorrow has 17-percent, while 38-percent are undecided. He has seen a rise in support since being endorsed by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and online political commentator Hasan Piker.
McMorrow’s campaign spokesman Jackson Boaz says he thinks the Mitchell Research poll is questionable.
“It doesn’t take more than a cursory look at this poll to see both a deeply flawed methodology and a fundamental misread of the dynamics on the ground in Michigan. Poll after poll has shown that Abdul El-Sayed cannot win a general election, and Haley Stevens is fundamentally out of step with Democratic voters. There is one candidate that can unite the party, stand up for our values, and beat Mike Rogers in November. That’s Mallory McMorrow.”
On background, some on the poll methodology that readers should understand:
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This poll was conducted entirely by text, which results in a much more engaged (and usually much more liberal) sample.
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The pollster simply texted registered voters and then based their findings on self-reported intention to vote in the Democratic primary – a very poor methodology for getting a representative sample of primary voters.
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The pollster did not do anything to control the sample based on education, race, ideology, or political engagement.
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The demographics of their sample are very far off the expected electorate in a lot of ways, particularly on college attainment. Their sample is 55% college-educated while the expected electorate is about 35% college educated – a difference which significantly benefits El Sayed. The sample is also quite a bit off on both age and race.
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The pollster did not even ask ideology, so they don’t have a variable to even use to control for ideology. In most polling, the electorate has been pretty consistently about ⅓ very liberal, ⅓ somewhat liberal, and ⅓ not liberal. It’s impossible to tell how far this sample deviates.
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The only poll this cycle that shows Abdul winning the primary assumes that, in the pollster’s words, “with two women and with one man, the man has an advantage because the women vote will be divided almost equally.”
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