I just got polled in the Insurance Commissioner race.
Received a call to my cell phone, which is interesting. It was an auto message asking me if I knew who the current Insurance Commissioner was. I had the option of pushing 1 for yes or 2 for no. Obviously, I pushed 1. The second question asked me if the current Insurance Commissioner was 1) Matt Denn, 2) Karen Weldin Stewart or 3) Mitch Crane.
Oh how I wish it was either 1 or 3, but I answered 2. The final question asked what I thought about the job the Insurance Commissioner was doing protecting consumers. The choices were 1) a good job, 2) a poor job, or 3) don’t know. I answered 2.
And that was it. No identification at the end of the call as to who was responsible for it. No questions as to who I intend to vote for in the upcoming primary. I guess Mitch Crane’s campaign could be behind the call, but I don’t know. I think whomever paid for it did so to get a sense of the playing field. To find out if the people are even aware of who the Insurance Commissioner is, and if they do, what they think of her. So I think perhaps either the state party or KWS herself could be behind the call.
I got it too. If anybody else gets it, please answer wrong for the second question (either Matt or Mitch) and tell us what happens.
Just got one too, on the land line.
Liberal Geek and/or Unstable Isotope also got the call, as they were talking about it on Twitter.
Yeah, I got it, too. Also a friend on Twitter got it, but she knew nothing about the race.
I suspect that it went out to registered Dems. My guess would be that Crane is paying for it. Or Matt Denn… 🙂
Also, no way that KWS was behind it. Even she couldn’t be dumb enough to mention her primary challenger in a robocall.
How random is this polling sample if we all got the call?
Feelin’ left out. Didn’t get a call yet.
Am I that unimportant??
Uh, never mind, rhetorical question.
BTW, I think Jason 330’s behind the poll. He’s got all our numbers.
The reason why I don’t think Crane was behind it is because there was no polling on the primary race. Why pay for a poll this early if you are not going to ask that question? Also, does he even have the money for it yet?
If it is not KWS, then the state party is behind it.
Or possibly from an unknown insurance industry operative, since *69 said it was from an unknown number (I don’t have CallerID. I’m half Amish).
LOL, El Som. We don’t call that Socialist Enclave known as Arden.
Hey! What about me? I didn’t get a call.
Hopefully, this poll is designed to show that anyone who has a cursory knowledge of the Insurance Commissioner doesn’t like her.
I think in Arden they all share a single phone.
WAIT A MINUTE, I HAVE THE PHONE NUMBER: It’s 302-295-6633. I called it back and got an automatic recording saying the 800 line I was called was not active.
In Arden they have a “party line.”
I got the same number, DD.
You guys are just jealous.
Free love, bay-bee!!
I got the call too on my cellphone. The party has that number. Perhaps the party is considering not getting behind KWS and putting its weight behind Crane. Not going with the incumbent–that would be different.
Well, whomever called is lucky they did it before Big Bang Theory started.
I’d guess it’s Mitch’s poll. No need for a horse race question this early, especially since next to nobody but us knows KWS or Mitch Crane. Or Matt Denn, for that matter (Sorry, Matt). Although the calls seem geared towards ‘high interest’ voters, those likely to vote in a primary. You know, sophisticated voters who read Delaware Liberal and especially enjoy my prose stylings.
295 is a New Castle prefix where the party HQ is. I think Dana is right. The party is testing the waters. I can’t see them getting behind Crane, but a non-endorsement is possible.
Somebody answer Question #2 wrong so we see if they give you a different question next, or whatever!
It had to be the Crane campaign. There isn’t much of a point for the party to pay for a poll so early for a minor race, especially since the party is for Crane anyway.
No way was it KWS. Her biggest advantage over Crane is name rec so why would she pay to promote Crane’s name rec among likely primary voters?
Has any candidate in Delaware ever polled so early for a race like this?
I googled it and WhyCallMe “located” the number coming from East 11th Street between Walnut and French.
http://www.whycall.me/302-295-6633.html
(This reverse phone number site is bogus, right?)
Well, my tin can and string didn’t shake, so I was left out, too.
I called the phone number and it said “This PATlive toll free number is not active…”
PATlive is a reseller of local phone numbers: http://www.patlive.com. Anybody can sign up for a 302 number with PATlive, no matter where they are.
So the 302 number is apparently a PATlive rented number, forwarded to the main PATlive 800 number, for which the customer did not sign up for any type of answering or custom message.
So the call could have originated from anywhere, with the 302 number just provided as the CallerID. Most likely a robocalling company anywhere in the nation. Or maybe a hardware dialer in somebody’s home or office.
Gotcha, Puck. Thanks.
No way it’s the state party. Everyone in leadership with the party knows that she is a kook.
Whoever paid for it, isn’t going to get much use out of it. There are no screening questions, whatever the results are cannot be used in any sort of scientific way.
“There are no screening questions:
If you know who you are calling, you don’t need screening questions. Hypothetically if it was Del Dems, they would already know you are a Democrat. And Question #2 WAS a screening question.
Do you know who the current Insurance Commissioner is?
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that 50% say “No” they don’t know who the current IC is. The remaining 50% have to pick KWS at a fairly high rate.
So this is geared to getting information about questions 1.
The mystery is, what happens to people who don’t know #2? Do they get sent to a push poll or a fundraising pitch? Or do they just get thank-you-goodbye? Unfortunately all of us were too smart to find out.
If you call a pre-determined universe you’re not polling, you’re calling a particular universe.
For a poll to be a strong sampling you need to call a representative sampling of all eligible voters, so calling all democrats is fine. But you would need to call a sampling of all eligible democrats. Calling for instance all democrats who have voted within 2 of the last 3 primaries is leaving off a lot of potential data and wouldn’t be an accurate sampling. Part of the purpose of an early poll is to determine the voting universe. Yes you can use voting history to predict, but part of the “political” elements is that the profile of a likely voter will change depending on each individual race. Even if you did narrow by voting history, you should still have a “are you planning to vote” question. Also leaving off demographic identifiers isn’t helpful either. Yes all of this information is most likely available to the campaign, but it helps for the person to self identify. Now if the point was more to ID and test the base, than that is fine. But it isn’t scientific and wouldn’t provide the same strength of information a scientific poll would.
My point is whoever did it, did it in house and I’m not sure what the intent was.
So I’d bet it was KWS, putting a “poll” in the field. But good luck getting back any helpful information from said “poll”.
It does sound like a KWS operative doing it from a kitchen table.
Robo calls can display any call back number the messaging party wants to use. I know a guy who sent out a Robo call and mistakenly used his own actual cell phone number for the caller ID. He knew when the call went out because dozens, if not hundreds, of people immediately tried to call him back, jamming up his phone for a few hours. And call backs kept coming for several days: “Who is this, and why did you call me…” LOL Lot’s of mischief potential there.
I received the call and wondered if it was the KWS Super PAC (her insurance company backers) polling to see if they should continue dumping money into her campaign.
Isn’t the Democratic Party’s usual policy to not endorse in primaries?
I just got the call and pressed “2” indicating that I didn’t know who the IC was. The next questions was, “Do you think it is 1-Matt Denn 2-KWS 3-Mitch Crane.
I pressed “1” and the robo voice gave me a terse thank you and hung up.