A prominent pollster in New York says last week's election victory by Erie County Executive-elect Mark Poloncarz validated an early October poll that found the Democrat gaining ground in his race against incumbent Republican Chris Collins.
When the Siena Research Institute released its first poll on the county executive's race, the Collins campaign was harshly critical. Campaign spokesman Stefan Mychajliw characterized the poll as "flawed," that it was just another media-sponsored poll that gets it wrong every time. Except that this time, Siena was right.
"We put out polls regularly. When people don't like the results, they say there was a bad question. It was a bad poll," said Siena's Steve Greenberg, who was interviewed by Susan Arbetter on Tuesday's Capitol Pressroom on WBFO. Siena did two polls, including one the weekend before Election Day that found Collins and Poloncarz were ftied. But it was the early October poll showing Poloncarz gaining ground that angered the Collins campaign.
"What we said was that Collins was up by three points, much closer than anyone had anticipated. Everyone thought Collins was going to win in a walk," Greenberg said. "We said no. It's a very close race. They (the Collins campaign) made up issues to say why Siena was wrong."
One was Siena's estimate in that first poll of just how many voters in the city of Buffalo would turn out. The Collins campaign felt Siena's number was over-inflated. But in the end, Greenberg said that turned out to be right, too.
"In the final analysis, the first poll was closer to the actual turnout in the city of Buffalo," Greenberg said. "We were actually right."
Greenberg admits they don't always get it right. But he says in the vast majority of cases, they do. Besides Siena, Greenberg said Marist and Quinnipiac colleges also have polling institutes that conduct reputable surveys of voter preferences.