First polling results
Last weekend, prior to ballots arriving in the mail, 200 registered Estes Park voters eligible to vote in the upcoming trustee election were telephoned and asked who they would likely be voting for (well, actually over 300 numbers connected to registered voters were called, but it took over 300 calls to find 200 registered voters who answered their telephone on a Saturday or Sunday, and were willing to participate).
The candidates' names were read in the order in which they will appear on the ballot. They were then read in clusters of three for those who were unable to provide three names, or who wanted to hear the names read in a slower fashion. No additional information was provided on any of the candidates, and no questions were answered if the responders asked for additional information. The option of "none of the above" was not provided, so people either had to provide at least one name (see below), or were excluded from the poll.
The results above have at least a 5% margin of error, and the number of individuals polled was small, so draw your own conclusions. If each responder provided 3 names, there would be 600 total "votes". The total number is less than 600, because some people said/claimed they were only voting for one individual, or two individuals, or hadn't yet made up their mind on three individuals.
There are multiple caveats with this poll, including (1) We have no idea if the people are actually going to vote for the candidates they named, or if they are even going to vote at all. (2) Only one person per household (in general, the person who answered the telephone, although in some cases, if the individual was not of voting age, an adult the telephone was handed to) was included. Sometimes couples vote along the same "party lines", sometimes they have divergent views on issues or candidates - we tried to get a broader sample size by calling more households rather than speaking to multiple individuals within a household, but recognize that the goal of "broadening" the response by casting the net wider may be counter-productive, in that it may not be reflective of the actual collective "mood" of the electorate. (2) We have no idea, because we didn't ask, how knowledgeable any of the responders were about any of the candidates, indeed, prior to receiving a ballot, name recognition may be the overriding criteria for why people responded the way they did. While name recognition should not be discounted, it will require a follow-up poll to determine if closeness to the election date cut-off has caused any views to change. Naturally, since decision making is an organic process leading up to the time of actually filling out and casting a ballot, we expect it will. We also expect, since the follow-up poll will almost certainly involve 200 different people (but potentially not unrelated people, or people completely unfamiliar with the results of the first poll), that differences may also be related to a different sample pool. (3) The poll tried to reach a broad sample of people from different neighborhoods, but we have no idea if we were adequately sampling different socioeconomic groups, races, religions, or identified party affiliations. If you don't like the way this poll is being conducted, pay for or carry out your own.
The candidates' names were read in the order in which they will appear on the ballot. They were then read in clusters of three for those who were unable to provide three names, or who wanted to hear the names read in a slower fashion. No additional information was provided on any of the candidates, and no questions were answered if the responders asked for additional information. The option of "none of the above" was not provided, so people either had to provide at least one name (see below), or were excluded from the poll.
The results above have at least a 5% margin of error, and the number of individuals polled was small, so draw your own conclusions. If each responder provided 3 names, there would be 600 total "votes". The total number is less than 600, because some people said/claimed they were only voting for one individual, or two individuals, or hadn't yet made up their mind on three individuals.
There are multiple caveats with this poll, including (1) We have no idea if the people are actually going to vote for the candidates they named, or if they are even going to vote at all. (2) Only one person per household (in general, the person who answered the telephone, although in some cases, if the individual was not of voting age, an adult the telephone was handed to) was included. Sometimes couples vote along the same "party lines", sometimes they have divergent views on issues or candidates - we tried to get a broader sample size by calling more households rather than speaking to multiple individuals within a household, but recognize that the goal of "broadening" the response by casting the net wider may be counter-productive, in that it may not be reflective of the actual collective "mood" of the electorate. (2) We have no idea, because we didn't ask, how knowledgeable any of the responders were about any of the candidates, indeed, prior to receiving a ballot, name recognition may be the overriding criteria for why people responded the way they did. While name recognition should not be discounted, it will require a follow-up poll to determine if closeness to the election date cut-off has caused any views to change. Naturally, since decision making is an organic process leading up to the time of actually filling out and casting a ballot, we expect it will. We also expect, since the follow-up poll will almost certainly involve 200 different people (but potentially not unrelated people, or people completely unfamiliar with the results of the first poll), that differences may also be related to a different sample pool. (3) The poll tried to reach a broad sample of people from different neighborhoods, but we have no idea if we were adequately sampling different socioeconomic groups, races, religions, or identified party affiliations. If you don't like the way this poll is being conducted, pay for or carry out your own.
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