With the primary elections kicking into a higher gear, Talk Business is launching a new round of political surveys to monitor developments in three of the state’s hotly contested Congressional Districts. You can access the poll results at the bottom of this post.
Today and tomorrow, Talk Business will release poll results of the 1st District Democratic primary, the 3rd District Republican primary and the 2nd District Democratic and Republican primaries. Later this month, we will reveal the results of a second round of polling followed by a third and final round before the May 18th primaries.
These polls were conducted by The Political Firm, a political strategy firm with offices in Little Rock and Baton Rouge. The calls were automated, or robocalls, which were made on April 6-7, 2010.
The sample sizes are all more than 400 registered Arkansas voters. Participants were asked to choose the political primary in which they planned to vote. They were then given the opportunity to make one choice from all of the eligible candidates in their respective primaries.
The results are not weighted, meaning that we have not manipulated the numbers to reflect any previous election cycle(s). They are a pure random sample of each individual district.
In reality, each candidate’s campaign has its own expectations for turnout by county. We are providing a break-out of the percentage of calls completed by county so that the different candidates in each race (and their supporters) can apply their own mathematical calculations to assess their standing, especially as this polling progresses.
We expect these numbers to shift during the next few weeks as the candidates implement their GOTV (get out the vote) programs and paid media campaigns. As you’ll see, there are large blocs of undecided voters, which we expect to see shrink as we draw closer to May 18th.
Some candidates may crow at the results today; others may view it as a call to action. In the end, we hope it raises the political debate and provides a deeper insight into what’s happening in these important Congressional campaigns.
UPDATE: View the results of the 4 Congressional primaries we’ve polled at the following links.
