Right after graduating from Northeastern University in 1974 I was hired by my late friend, Democratic operative Dottie Lynch, to work at Cambridge Survey Research ; a polling company founded by Patrick Cadell, pollster to a peanut farmer from Georgia named Jimmy Carter. One of the first things I learned about polling was how easy it is to skew the results based on the accuracy of the polling sample.
So it came as no surprise to me when I saw the latest Quinnipiac poll (8/20-25) of 1,563 registered voters that asked voters the first word that came to mind when they heard the name Hillary Clinton . The response was ‘liar’. Upon closer inspection of the polling sample the respondents’ party identification by percentage broke down as follows : Independent – 6 Democrat – 41 Republican – 43. This struck me as odd because I had recently seen a Pew Research Center national survey that confirmed party affiliation as follows : Independent – 39 Democrat – 32 Republican – 23.
All of which lent truth to the words of England’s former conservative Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli : ” There are lies, damnable lies and statistics.”
Fred Rich LaRiccia
