Yesterday the excellent right leaning website BizPac Review (highly recommended if you want a conservative viewpoint on south Florida politics) reported on an October Gravis Marketing survey that showed Republican challenger Karen Harrington within striking distance of Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Harrington, who any person with any understanding of voter behavior or independent voters in Broward County realized had zero chance of winning this race. But somehow, Gravis Marketing, a controversial firm whose background has been dissected previously on this site, concocted a survey that led directly to Harrington’s fundraising appeals. This money could have been spent much more easily on numerous Republicans who lost relatively close elections in the region. Perhaps despite our denunciations of this firm, Democrats should be grateful that Gravis exists because it either lulls Republicans into a false sense of security or worse yet for the GOP generates donations for candidates sure to lose.
The reality is while firms like this exist to prop up campaigns it does a fundamental disservice not only to the Republican Party but to the polling profession. This is a profession which is highly specialized and though many pollsters are partisan, they tend to be brutally objective. Some of the best pollsters I know and have worked with are Republicans, which is why those leading GOP firms should work to publicly marginalize and expose firms like Gravis Marketing.
As someone who writes checks, I don’t think it is right to mislead people with a poll. There is enough political spin. Anybody who participated did wrong by the voters.
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