A poll is out and making the rounds in major statewide media showing President Trump’s support in Louisiana is cratering, but a political analyst says there’s serious reasons to doubt the poll’s accuracy.
UL Lafayette Political Science Professor Pearson Cross says the poll also shows Governor Edwards with a three to one lead over his closest Republican competitor, which doesn’t clear the commonsense test…
“We have to point out that the poll is based on only 600 voters, which gives you a pretty wide margin of error, perhaps as much as eight to ten percent.”
The poll by Verne Kennedy claims a margin of error of 4.1 percent.
The work is reportedly an independent commission, but Cross says the surprising low levels of support for prominent conservative politicians and policies may indicate the pollster was hired by a more left leaning source…
“When people run polls for campaign, typically those polls show what they want to see. Very rarely do you have someone do a poll for someone and they come back and say, right, you have no chance.”
One question shows Louisianans oppose a second term for the President 54 percent to 37 percent.
Another shock in the poll was the data indicating Louisianans oppose the President’s border wall plan 49 percent to 41 percent. Cross says sometimes you have to take poll results with a grain of salt.
“Depending on how you ask the question, pollsters know that you can change people’s opinion quite a bit. It may have been asked in such a way that voters felt pushed into opposing the wall.”
