Just when all appeared lost for Los Angeles mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel – a SurveyUSA poll on April 11 showed her trailing by 9 points and a Los Angeles Times poll on last weekend showed her trailing by 10 points – she suddenly has reversed her skid.
A new SurveyUSA poll this afternoon shows a dramatic shift, with Ms. Greuel now narrowly ahead of Eric Garcetti, although within the survey's theoretical margin of sampling error.
Given three separate sanity checks described below, SurveyUSA sees the contest as Ms. Greuel 45 percent, Mr. Garcetti 42 percent, a 12-point swing in Ms. Greuel's favor.
1st Sanity Check: Whenever there is dramatic movement in a race, the first place to look is at the other contests in the same poll.
In the race for City Attorney, on April 11, SurveyUSA had challenger Mike Feuer 12 points in front of incumbent Carmen Trutanich. The Times poll had Mr. Feuer up by 11 last weekend. This afternoon, SurveyUSA has Mr. Feuer still in the lead by 10 points, 45 percent to 35 percent. All three City Attorney polls are effectively the same. No movement.
In the race for City Controller, SurveyUSA had challenger Dennis Zine 6 points ahead of challenger Ron Galperin on April 11. Last weekend, the Times poll had Mr. Zine with a 12-point lead. 1This afternoon, SurveyUSA has Mr. Zine in charge by 13 points, 43 percent to Mr. Galperin’s percent. There is a trend here toward Mr. Zine. If you plot the polls, there is no bizarre lurching.
Therefore, there is no evidence that a “bad random sample” caused the mayor's race numbers to swing wildly, for similar leaps would have been expected in the City Attorney and City Controller races.
Instead, the big swings are restricted to the mayor's race, such as:
- Ms. Greuel is running much stronger among women, where she now has a 15-point advantage.
- Ms. Greuel is running much stronger among older voters (age 50-plus). One month ago, Ms. Greuel had trailed by 8 points and now leads by 13.
- Mr. Garcetti has lost ground among Latinos, where his double-digit lead has evaporated, and among whites, where his single-digit lead has vanished.
- Lower-income voters and Democrats have both moved to Ms. Greuel.
2nd Sanity Check: Whenever there is a dramatic movement, a second place to look is at the exact words that were read to respondents. Importantly: This April 25 questionnaire differed from the questionnaire that SurveyUSA used in its April 11 poll release. Three questions were added to this survey, about medical marijuana. Those questions appear below, exactly as asked, as questions Nos. 4, 5 and 6.
The wonkish issue that needs to be examined is: Could the addition of three questions about medical marijuana have inadvertently impacted the mayor's contest higher up in the questionnaire. The theoretical answer is: Only if Garcetti voters were disproportionately likely to terminate the interview (and therefore not have their vote for Garcetti counted) during the reading of the marijuana questions. The actual answer is no.
Garcetti voters were not disproportionately likely to terminate the interview during the reading of the marijuana questions.
3rd Sanity Check: When there is dramatic movement, the next place to look is at the movement day to day. SurveyUSA polled across three nights to produce these results: Monday, Tuesday, andyesterday. Though the daily samples are small, it is instructive to observe that Mr. Garcetti and Ms. Greuel are tied in Monday's polling, and that Ms. Greuel led in data collected Tuesday and yesterday. Garcetti led on none of the 3 days.
A debate between the candidates was televised Monday night. Ms. Greuel's gains appear to have come after that debate.
Now, to the Medical Marijuana Ballot Referenda:
- On Prop. D, “Yes” leads “No” by 16 points.
- On Ordinance E, “No” leads “Yes” by 13 points.
On Measure F, “Yes” leads “No” by 3:1. Support is above 50 percent.
