Public Policy Polling or Controlling? [ Jim Geraghty, NRO ]

Public Policy Polling is avowedly pro-Democratic... "We're absolutely rooting in the race. We don't want Richard Burr to get reelected," as PPP's Tom Jensen declared to Politico last year. (Jensen did go on to say, "But our reputation is predicated on getting it right, and we're not going to cook the numbers just to tweak Richard Burr's nerves. They are what they are.") Burr is a first-term Republican North Carolina senator who has complained that PPP's partisan affiliation is largely ignored and that his numbers in PPP's polls seem strangely low compared to his numbers in other polls... Publications that cited the firm's polls without mentioning any Democratic affiliation include the Washington Post, Politico, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Dayton Daily News, the Austin American-Statesman, AOL's Politics Daily, The Atlantic, The Hill, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and local North Carolina television stations. One GOP consultant in the state notes that the firm's name echoes those of the Public Policy Institute at Western Carolina University and the Carolina Institute for Public Policy at the University of North Carolina, two genuinely nonpartisan educational institutions. The consultant speculates that PPP benefits from the perceived association. It's not just Republicans who question the firm's results and accuse it of playing favorites. In February, as the Democratic primary to decide who would run against Burr began heating up, candidate Ken Lewis complained that [PPP founder] Debnam had donated $2,400 to one of his rivals, Cal Cunningham.

It would have been a mistake to weight those states to 2008 party ID or presidential horse-race numbers because the level of engagement is just different in different states.” Jensen can find lots of reasons why Democratic turnout may not be so bad in some states: “In places like Texas, where Democrats have a great candidate in Bill White, and Kentucky, where Rand Paul has a polarizing impact, we’re not seeing much falloff in Democratic interest from 2008.”

LOL ... Bill White is as bland and boring as they get. The Texas Dems are ‘excited’ about White only because he’s the only candidate they’ve got at the state level worth a tinker’s damn; and its more about hatin’ on Perry than liking White. Even White spends most of his time talking about Perry, that’s how boring White is. The rest of the state-wide Dem field are basically name-on-ballot level nobody types who have zero chance of winning. (And White’s chances are about zero as well - it’s more a matter of much will perry win by, a little or a lot.)

This quote is damning. PPP drinks Dem koolaid.

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