JLF head John Hood had a column out last week on the various local organization that produce high-quality polling data. A highlight:
And when it comes to predicting the outcomes of elections, don’t fall into the trap of assuming that only paid professionals staffing phone banks or running auto-dialing machines produce valid results. The surveys that Elon [University] and High Point [University] conduct are filled with useful insights about what North Carolinians think — and how they are likely to act on it when casting their ballots.
With that in mind, Elon University’s latest poll results, which try to get at why people vote the way they do, produces a rather surprising result. The conventional wisdom is that Libertarians candidates mainly take votes from Republicans. Elon’s survey found a rather different result in this year’s Senate race:
[Libertarians Sean] Haugh, who has consistently polled between 5 percent and 8 percent, could hurt [Democrat Kay] Hagan more than [Republican Thom] Tillis. Although Libertarians traditionally lean more to the political right, respondents who said they would vote for Haugh overwhelmingly chose Hagan when they were shown a ballot with just Hagan and Tillis.
Interesting.
