A methodological tussle broke out last week between Hillary Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, and his fellow pollsters.
Penn claimed in a breakfast with reporters that in a general election Clinton would receive the backing of 24 percent of Republican women, helping to bolster the shaky argument about her electability. Penn's number was immediately scrutinized by ABC News polling director Gary Langer, who found that in a race against Rudy Giuliani, Clinton garnered only 11 percent of the GOP woman vote. Barack Obama pollster Joel Benenson wrote that "Penn's assertion is entirely baseless and refuted by a number of public polls."
Under fire, Penn clarified. "I was looking recently at Republican women voters (core Republicans and Republican leaners), and their support for Hillary has doubled in the last few months to 13 percent, from less than 6 percent," he blogged. "Also quite interestingly, "Don't Knows" surged to 11 percent, so a total of 24 percent would either vote for her or consider voting for her."
In fact, Penn should've originally said that, according to his internal polling, 13 percent of GOP women were considering voting for Hillary--and the group included those who only lean Republican. This might seem like a tiny quibble. But it's indicative of larger questions that have been raised about Penn's polling--and the analysis and advocacy he's doing on behalf of HRC (the latter of which was the subject of Maureen Dowd's column on Sunday about Penn's new book).
Over the summer, for an article on Clinton's corporate advisers, I reported how half a dozen former staffers said Penn has stretched to get the answers he wanted, including manipulating data, phrasing misleading questions and shifting the demographics of those polled.
Penn never releases his full polling data, so there's no way to know if it's accurate. But the recent dust-up proves that others in the profession are watching closely.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=245137
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