Rick Santorum attacks Franklin & Marshall pollster

[Tender Branson]

Rick Santorum: Pennsylvania polls showing close race are work of ‘Democratic hack’
By Felicia Sonmez

Former senator Rick Santorum on Sunday dismissed recent polls showing his support collapsing in his home state of Pennsylvania, taking aim at the nonpartisan pollster behind the surveys as “a Democratic hack.”

In an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Santorum was asked about a late-March Franklin & Marshall poll that shows him taking 30 percent to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s 28 percent in the Keystone State’s Republican presidential primary. A mid-February Franklin & Marshall survey showed Santorum at 45 percent and Romney at 16 percent.

The pollster who conducts the Franklin & Marshall survey, G. Terry Madonna, is a respected nonpartisan political science professor who is also the director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College.

“First off, the Democratic hack that does that, Terry Madonna, has probably singularly gotten more polls wrong than any person I know in the history of the state,” Santorum said Sunday. “There are two other polls that are out this week that have us up 20 and I think the other is 17. This is a pollster who just — I think he just draws numbers out of a hat sometimes. We feel very good about Pennsylvania. We’re going to do exceptionally well there.”

In a phone interview Sunday afternoon, Madonna — who also polls for eight Pennsylvania media clients spanning the ideological spectrum — defended his two decades of experience as a nonpartisan pollster, arguing that Santorum is “entitled to his own opinions; he’s not entitled to his own facts.”

“Number one, I’ve never polled for any party or any candidate in the 21 years that I’ve been polling, first at Millersville University and now at Franklin & Marshall College,” Madonna said. “Number two, as I said in a tweet, I had Santorum winning in ’94 and 2000. He won. . . . I had him losing in ’06 to [Sen. Robert P.] Casey, which he did. In 2010, I did a bunch of congressional races in our state; I did now-Senator [Patrick J.] Toomey and Gov. [Tom] Corbett, had Republicans winning in all those races. They won in all of them, in every poll that I did in 2010.”

“So this ‘Democratic hack’ — me — shows all these Republicans winning?” Madonna said. “I don’t understand that.”

He added that by claiming the poll numbers were drawn “out of a hat,” Santorum “insults the professionals who work in the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College, where the poll is done using scientific methods that you would expect to be done by academic pollsters.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/rick-santorum-pennsylvania-polls-showing-close-race-are-work-of-democratic-hack/2012/04/01/gIQA7yE2oS_blog.html?tid=pm_politics_pop

[Tender Branson]

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Actual result:

52% Santorum
46% Klink

...

Yeah, Democratic hack ...

[Tender Branson]

BTW:

Why did Santorum overpoll so heavily ahead of the 2000 Senate election ?

http://www3.nationaljournal.com/scripts/printpage.cgi?/members/polltrack/2000/races/sen/pa/pa_s_gen.htm#MASON-DIXON

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Actual result:

52% Santorum
46% Klink

...

Yeah, Democratic hack ...

LOL, that's even more pro-Santorum then this infamous poll.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=48619.0

[Brittain33]

Divided Dem primary left Klink broke. He was never considered a serious challenger and he closed the gap on Gore's coattails. I think Stabenow and Cantwell trailed significantly into fall, too.

[J. J.]

J. J.'s First Rule of Elections:  "If a candidate that say something like 'I don't look at the polls,' or 'The only polls that matter are the ones on Election Day,' that candidate will lose."
 

[Miles]

Franklin and Marshall had Toomey up 8 and Corbett up 16 in late October; quite a bit of GOP bias there.

[Keystone Phil]

J. J.'s First Rule of Elections:  "If a candidate that say something like 'I don't look at the polls,' or 'The only polls that matter are the ones on Election Day,' that candidate will lose."
 

No where in this story did Santorum say that he isn't looking at polling or that it doesn't matter. In fact, he specifically cited two polls.

[pbrower2a]

J. J.'s First Rule of Elections:  "If a candidate that say something like 'I don't look at the polls,' or 'The only polls that matter are the ones on Election Day,' that candidate will lose."
 

Good one.  Rick Santorum is in denial.

"I can't be dying; I'm only 52. Sure -- but you are a four-pack-a-day smoker.

"The only poll that counts is the one on Election Day" means that one can't lose an election for all practical purposes long before Election Day.

[J. J.]

J. J.'s First Rule of Elections:  "If a candidate that say something like 'I don't look at the polls,' or 'The only polls that matter are the ones on Election Day,' that candidate will lose."
 

No where in this story did Santorum say that he isn't looking at polling or that it doesn't matter. In fact, he specifically cited two polls.

It falls under the "something like" clause.

[Keystone Phil]

J. J.'s First Rule of Elections:  "If a candidate that say something like 'I don't look at the polls,' or 'The only polls that matter are the ones on Election Day,' that candidate will lose."
 

No where in this story did Santorum say that he isn't looking at polling or that it doesn't matter. In fact, he specifically cited two polls.

It falls under the "something like" clause.

No, it absolutely doesn't. At all. Candidates dismiss certain polls all the time. Santorum wasn't dismissing all polling. Again, he cited two polls in his statement.