This morning, in the wake of the
resurgence of Mormon-gate as a story, I've been doing some digging around. While I had hoped to write something on where we stand now, and what we know, including the results of my digging this morning, at an actual publication (as opposed to my own blog), with a few hours to go before everyone switches off for Thanksgiving, I'm bailing on that idea.
So, here goes.
1. As I read through the latest this morning, one point sprung out at me. It was the same point that sprung out at me when I found out last week that an Iowa State Rep. who had endorsed Romney was called. And that was, whoever commissioned this survey wanted Romney team members called. I say that without inclusion of the words "evidently" or "apparently" because it seemed to me that including people on Romney's payroll or publicly affiliated with the campaign in a call sample would be bad, and non-standard, practice. Including more than one such person (and thus far, we know of three included in the call sample) to me evidenced something beyond negligence.
2. Turns out my assumption, that it would be totally non-standard practice, to include those on payroll, at the very least, in a call sample is correct. In speaking to a top Republican pollster this morning, I have been told that normally, people working for or associated with campaigns, and members of the media, are excluded from calling lists in the first place-- presumably because of bias that might be evident, which could raise questions about the accuracy of the result. There are two points relevant to this situation to glean from this. First, it is definitely not standard to call people receiving money from a campaign-- as was done here. Second, pollsters determine who is called, not the firm conducting the calls.
3. This is consistent with other informati...
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