Wednesday, April 11, 2007 Got a question? Get an answer. Send an e-mail to Dear Mr. Mullings Dear Mr. Mullings: No one I know or have ever talked to has ever been called by a polling company. How can that be? Bob There are about 300 million people in the United States and most of them will never be called by a polling company. The two big challenges for a survey research firm are to (1) write the questions using language that will not lead to a pre-determined response; (2) to put the questions in an order which will also not affect the outcome; and (3) be certain that the people who are being called represent the population as a whole. Let's take these one at a time. Let's say you want to find out who a caller is backing for, just to pull one out of the air, the Republican nomination for President. You have a couple of ways of going about it. You can ask who the respondent favors without offering any names. Most people who do not spend every waking moment watching cable news would be hard pressed to remember more than one or two candidates, so this is not a favored technique. The better way is to say something like, "Thinking about the Republican nomination for President, I am going to read a list of names. If the election were held today, which person would you vote for:" and then you read the list of names. However, legit polling firms will ROTATE the list, so Giuliani would be the first name on the first call, McCain the first name on the second, and so on. See how this works? As to point 2, it is very easy to move a respondent to a pre-ordained conclusion by asking that "who would you vote for" question if you asked it AFTER you listed a series of either positive, or negative points about a specific candidate. At its worst, this is known as a "push poll" because you literally "push" the respondent into the answer you want. For instance if I were a candidate for President and the pollster said something like: If you knew that Mr. Galen lied on his resume by saying he was 6' 2" when he is, in fact, 5' 7" (OK, 5' 6"); and if you knew that he said he graduated from Marietta College with honors when, in fact, he flunked out after three semesters and finally graduated after seven years; and if you knew that ..." would you be more or less likely to vote for him? On the final point, legit survey research firms try very hard to have the people who are included in the poll represent the population as a whole. If they are surveying the voting population, they try to get enough Republicans, enough Democrats and enough independents; enough people between 21 and 36; enough Blacks; enough Whites; enough Hispanics, etc. etc. That is why you will often hear howls of outrage (typically from the campaign which comes out behind in the poll) when a poll is released which "oversampled" or "undersampled" Democrats or Republicans or Southerners or New Hampshire-ites (Hampshirians?) or whatever. To the basic question: How can they sample 1,000 people and think that is representative of the entire 300 million people in the country, there is a simple answer which was first explained to me by political consultant Paul Newman (not the guy with the salad dressing): When you have blood drawn at your doctor's office, does he take all the blood out of your body? Or does he take just enough to get a representative sample? Smart guy, that Newman. Dear Mr. Mullings: Now that you are in your second season as a credentialled sports reporter covering the Washington Nationals, how did the term "Baltimore Chop" get its name? Marc Smyrna, Georgia A "Baltimore Chop" is not a cut of beef. It has to do with a batter swinging down on a pitch to make it smack into the ground just in front of home plate. If it works properly, the ball bounces so high that, by the time it comes down, the batter has made it safely to first base. This has not been done since about 1900 during what is now called the "dead ball" era. The Baltimore Chop was perfected by Baltimore Oriole players such as Wee Willie Keeler who played from 1892 to 1910. The Baltimore Oriole franchise for which Keeler played, by the way, is now - through several twists and turns - the current New York Yankees. The current Baltimore Orioles moved to Baltimore in 1953. From the official Baltimore Orioles webpage: On September 28, 1953, baseball's owners unanimously agreed upon the move of the St. Louis Browns to Baltimore. The move followed a season in which the Browns went 54-100 and drew a crowd of only 3,174 to their season finale, an 11-inning loss to Chicago. Dear Mr. Mullings: What is the difference between an ocean and a sea? Dave California In spite of what you were told in high school health class, size does matter. According to most sources, oceans are larger than seas. The generally recognized oceans are: Arctic, Atlantic, Indian and Pacific - although some leave out the Arctic Ocean and others add the Southern Ocean. They are defined as a "body of interconnected salt water that covers 71 percent of the Earth's surface." From the CIA Factbook: In the spring of 2000, the International Hydrographic Organization decided to delimit the waters within the Antarctic Convergence as a fifth world ocean - the Southern Ocean - by combining the southern portions of the Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific Ocean. The Southern Ocean extends from the coast of Antarctica north to 60 degrees south latitude. The Southern Ocean is now the fourth largest of the world's five oceans (after the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, and Indian Ocean, but larger than the Arctic Ocean) Oceans are larger than seas (which are loosely defined as large bodies of water bounded by - but not necessarily completely enclosed by - land masses); and seas are generally (but not always) larger than lakes. Lake Superior, for instance, is larger than the Sea of Galilee (which is really a lake). While seas are generally larger than gulfs; gulfs are generally larger than bays, and bays are generally larger than straits, this is only a rough guide because the Mediterranean Sea is larger than the Arctic Ocean, but smaller than the Bay of Bengal. According to a NOAA website: "Ninety-seven percent of the earth�s water is in the oceans. Two percent is in glaciers and ice caps at the two Poles. One percent is divided among the world�s lakes, rivers, groundwater, soil moisture, and water vapor in the air." Last one Dear Mr. Mullings: What happens to the money raised if a candidate drops out of the presidential race? Suzanne I knew the answer to that question, but I had to turn to campaign finance expert (and Mullpal of long standing) Ben Ginsberg of the law firm of Patton, Boggs to another. My question to Ben was how can Hillary (or Rudy or anyone else) take funds from their US Senate accounts and just transfer it over to their Presidential account? Let's say I gave $2,000 to Giuliani when he was running for Senate against Hillary. Now, Giuliani has transferred that $2,000 into his Presidential account. If I give $2,000 to his Presidential bid, haven't I exceeded the limit which is only $2,300? Ben, because he is kind, wrote approximately the following: The key is the concept of "excess campaign funds". A donor's limits are per cycle. In other words, once one election is over, you get a fresh set of limits. Under the rules, you can give $2,300 to a candidate for each the primary and the general election [which a bunch of people did for Hillary]. Similarly, if you max out to a House candidate for the 2006 election cycle and he/she has excess cash on hand at the end, you can still give to that candidate in 2008. McCain, Clinton, Brownback, and Rudy all raised money for previous elections. Once that election passes, they can roll it to a new federal election. On the exact question posed by Suzanne, Ben wrote (in substance): If a candidate drops out, he or she can return it, give it to charity, transfer without limit to a national or state party committee, roll it to a PAC they create or, just hold it in case he or she runs for something else some day. There was a time when excess campaign funds could be converted into private funds by the candidate by simply paying the taxes on it. It was not unheard of for Members of Congress and Senators to raise vast amounts of money for the "re-election" only to announce they were retiring and took the money with them. After that become public, they changed the rules and can no longer do that. See you next week. Rich Got a question? Get an answer. Send an e-mail to Dear Mr. Mullings                                     Click here to return to the Secret Decoder Ring page Copyright © 2007 Barrington Worldwide, LLC