In the spring of 2006, Al Weed authorized the expenditure of a significant amount of his campaign war chest for a thorough-going poll by Zogby International, one of the leading political polling organizations in the U.S.

The primary purpose of the poll, according to campaign manager Stephen Davis, was to fine-tune the message: to determine which issues people cared most about, and how to speak to those issues most effectively. Or, if the winds of opinion were found to be wafting against a particular Weed position, perhaps to speak about that one a bit less.

Another reason for polling is that some of the larger sources of financial support outside the district (PACs, interest groups, party stalwarts) are comforted by large bound stacks of printout, even if the information contained therein is not particularly comforting.

The poll was done by telephone, with sufficient calling to elicit satisfactory responses from 601 people likely to vote. This number gives a margin of error of 4.1% on broad responses. Where opinions are more fragmented, or for small subgroups of respondents, the margins are higher, and can be so high as to be meaningless or worse, misleading.

Drawing meaning out of these numbers is why you call in the high-price pollsters.

The names of people to call and their phone numbers were derived from various lists, with the intent of accurately constructing a pool of respondents representing the various demographic characteristics of the district:

• location within the district
• race
• age
• household income
• education
• gender

A note about the difficulties of fulfilling the polling requirements. The Fifth District of Virginia is about 9,000 square miles (for reference, New Jersey is less than 8,000 square miles) and encompasses 22 localities--18 counties and 4 independent cities. Parts of the district are included in the Charlottesville, Lynchburg-Roanoke, Danville, Richmond-Petersburg and Raleigh-Durham media markets. Charlottesville is media-rich, anomolously liberal, relatively affluent and politically aware. Almost all of the balance of the district is ... not so much.

Zogby, working with the Weed campaign, decided to break this crazy-quilt into four segments: north (Charlottesville and surrounding); central (suburban Lynchburg to Roanoke and east to Drake's Branch or thereabouts), southeast (South Boston to Lawrenceville) and southwest (Danville / Martinsville).

Virginia's Fifth Congressional District

The poll-callers wound up with the following profile of respondents.

A couple of things stand out.

Thirty-eight percent of the respondents called themselves Democrats, 31% Republican, 29% Independent and 1% Libertarian, Yet in the election that eventually followed, Virgil Goode amassed 60% of the vote. That is to say, if Weed got all the Democrats, he managed only to add in six or seven percent of the self-styled independents and libertarians, while Virgil got 93% of their vote.

This is borne out by the self-assessment of ideology, where 60% range from "leaning conservative" to "very." But you'll see a little later that many of these conservatives, dissatisfied with the direction of the nation, were willing to consider voting Democratic.

Question 44 on the polling script asked "In the election for Congress in 2004, for whom did you vote, Republican Virgil Goode or Democrat Al Weed?"

Goode 47%
Weed 40%
None/Not sure 14%

Yet an actual election had taken place, in which Goode received 63% of the vote and Weed 36%. So the polling panel was, at least in this regard, far from representative of the district, and quite likely to skew the results. Or, alternatively, the panel simply overstated support for Weed.

Of the 601 respondents, 376 (63%) consider themselves Protestant, and of those, three out of five say they are "Born again." And 25% describe themselves as "Other." The nature of other was not probed, but it is quite likely that many of them would fall into some corner of "Protestant" if pressed. Wiccan was not offered as a possible answer.

Income and education levels reported by the group seem high, with 25% reporting household incomes above $75,000 and 70% claiming at least some college. There are a couple of possible explanations: One is that the Charlottesville area is somewhat over-represented, with close to a third of the respondents, while the population of the Charlottesville area is less than a fourth that of the district overall.

Another explanation is that the people who responded to the poll are self-described "likely voters," and therefore older, better educated and more affluent than the general population.

And people who agree to be interviewed about intimate details of their lives by a complete stranger, even over the telephone, may understandably try to please or impress.

Telephone polling

Telephone polling presents problems. People who will talk to an interviewer may differ (and therefore skew results) from those who won't. People who do not have a phone do not get called. People who rely on cell phones do not get called. People who are busy screen their calls, or may just not be home much. Zogby knows a great deal about these problems, and they do their best to take them into account.

But what pollsters know about the difference between the statistics of one poll and the possible truth is known from national data, and the Fifth District may not be much like the nation.

Issues

Virgil Goode has received a lot of public notice for his recent statements against immigration, but this has been an important issue for the congressman for a long time. He frequently devotes his "Goode News for the Fifth District" columns to the subject. Another frequent topic, in his column and in his public statements, is repeal of the Inheritance Tax.

Polling Question 15 asks, "In your own words, what are the top two issues facing the country?"

Immigration was mentioned by very few, as was the 'death tax' or 'gay marriage' or other possible formulations of those issues. Gasoline prices ranked much higher as a concern than any of these, across the District.

The war with Iraq was the principal issue mentioned in each region, showing up more in the south

North 54%
Central 49%
Southeast 64%
Southwest 64%

But just knowing that the war is an important issue seems not to be enough information. What might seem to be a logical followup, probing whether the war in Iraq was an issue for that person because it was important for the defense of our freedoms, as some might say, or an important issue because it was draining our national treasure and devastating the region, as others might say, was not asked.

Jobs / economy turned out to be the second most important issue in all the regions, although with (understandably) less emphasis in the northern part of the district:

North 26%
Central 32%
Southeast 37%
Southwest 37%

Terrorism / security and health care vie for the next position, with health care edging security in the north, security edging healthcare in the south.

Gay rights

Issues surrounding gay rights and the proposed marriage amendment provided the most extreme of regional variations in answers to the poll. The question was put this way:

Candidate A supports a referendum to amend the state's constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman and would outlaw all civil unions in the state.
Candidate B supports civil unions for gay couples and believes that marriage is a religious and personal issue. Which candidate's position comes closer to your own - A or B?

Here are the results--Charlottesville strongly opposes the amendment, while the entire rest of the District supports it even more strongly.

Where is the Internet?

The poll asked what TV and radio stations people listen to, and what newspapers and magazines they read. Sixty-eight percent think of relevision as their primary source of news, 13% newspapers, and 5% radio.

The only mention of the internet in the entire poll was to ask how many people employed it as their primary source of news, with 6% responding. No followup, no probing about internet penetration of households. No questions then, in this age, that would lead to decisions about the utility of the internet in the 2006 Weed campaign or for future campaigns, whether by Weed or another Democrat.

Facts and opinions and what they mean to the voters

A series of questions were asked in an attempt to find specifics for the development of campaign materials and talking points. There was a concern in the campaign that some of these statements might be taken for 'push polling' and they were phrased with great care. Here are the results, ranked by the most positive result for each candidate:

So Al's support for switchgrass and his advocacy of a single-payer healthcare system are the biggest plusses for him, while his employment of immigrant labor, being a liberal from the northern part of the district, and favoring decriminalization of marijuana all count most against him.

The largest negatives for Virgil are the MZM contributions and the votes to fund the war, while his constituent service, support of the medicare drug program and membership on the appropriations committee move voters to favor him.

Views of political figures

People were asked to rate their feelings about some familiar names.

There is one heartening and useful piece of information for the Weed campaign in this panel. Even though most of the respondents are more or less conservative in their views, by June of 2006, only 43% of them expressed a favorable view of George Bush.

This crystallizes the challenge that faced Al Weed: there are opportunities. He learned that no one except Virgil thinks immigration and the death tax are very important. Most of the electorate has an unfavorable view of the president and the war, which Goode has consistently supported. Of people who have an opinion about him, Weed is favored by three to one.

Yet after three years criss-crossing the District, attending dozens of churches, scores of public meetings, hundreds of coffees and chats, as well as debates and forums, occasional appearances on television, ongoing coverage in the daily newspapers, … 4 out of 10 can't recall having heard of him.

A followup 'tracking' poll in September, with the campaigns in high gear, showed 33% of the respondents still unfamiliar with Weed, and an increase in the percentage of people who viewed him unfavorably--perhaps because of negative campaigning against him.

You can poll, and the poll may tell you a lot about the people of the District and their views of issues and the opponent, but if you can't make yourself known, it just doesn't matter very much.

(Dave Sagarin, February 23, 2007)

Note: For Al Weed's views following his first campaign against Rep. Goode, see Al Weed Comments on What It Will Take For a Democrat to Ever Win Virginia's 5th District Congressional Seat. A year later, he announce a second attempt, Weed Targets 5th Again. There is also a complete Index to Coverage of Al Weed on the Loper website.