(1) Do you think it's appropriate for polls to omit one of three significant candidates on the ballot?
(2) Do you think such omission inevitably leads to calls for the third candidate to quit the race, thus throwing it to the remaining candidate most like him or her?
WHAT'S YOUR OPINION? Here's what Nate Silver has had to say about it:
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From
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/poll-showing-gains-paladino-excluded/FiveThirtyEight - Nate Silver's Political Calculus September 20, 2010, 6:33 pm
"Poll Showing Gains by Paladino Excluded Key Candidate From Ballot
A new poll this morning from Rasmussen Reports suggests significant tightening
in the New York governor¡s race. The poll has the Democrat, Andrew Cuomo,
ahead 54 percent to 38 percent against Carl P. Paladino, the boisterous Buffalo
businessman who soundly won the Republican primary last week against Rick
Lazio. In the previous Rasmussen Reports poll, taken before the primary, Mr.
Cuomo led Mr. Paladino by a much larger margin: 58 to 29.
... there is one clear flaw with this poll, which is that it did not include
an option for Mr. Lazio, who--even as he lost to Mr. Paladino among
Republicans--won the Conservative Party's nomination for governor and is
expected to remain in the race. ...
sometimes, the Conservative Party and the Republican Party split, as they
have in this case--and this can have a much bigger influence on the outcome."
From
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/now-heres-a-shocking-poll/FiveThirtyEight - Nate Silver's Political Calculus September 22, 2010, 12:11 pm
"Now Here's a Shocking Poll: Cuomo 49, Paladino 43
Nine out of 10 'SHOCKING' poll results aren't shocking if you're paying
attention....
But every now and then, a poll comes along that really forces us to reconsider
what we thought we knew about a particular race. There is one such poll out
this morning from Quinnipiac University, which finds the Republican nominee of
governor in New York, Carl Paladino, only 6 points behind the Democrat, Andrew
Cuomo. ...
Polls taken before the primary on Sept. 14 showed Mr. Cuomo leading Mr.
Paladino by much wider margins, ranging from 23 points to 45 points. This
includes three prior polls by Quinnipiac University, which had shown leads of
36, 30 and 37 points for Mr. Cuomo. ...
Several qualifiers are in order. First, Quinnipiac did not include the
Conservative Party's nominee, Rick Lazio, in their poll....
I asked Doug Schwartz,
director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, why Mr. Lazio was not included.
'Lazio has not announced his intentions,' Mr. Schwartz wrote in an e-mail. 'So
we didn't include him. If he decides to stay in the race, we will include him
in the next survey.'"
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