State GOP Chairman’s race a dead heat

Posted By Shawn Millerick on Jan 4, 2011 | 17 comments

The race for Chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee is a dead heat between Cheshire County GOP Chair Juliana Bergeron and tea party honcho Jack Kimball, an analysis by NH Journal shows.

Bergeron has 58 votes committed to her at this time. Kimball has 57.

The analysis includes publicly announced endorsements plus the results of NH Journal’s exclusive phone canvass of committee members. The phone canvass was conducted on Tuesday, January 4th.

Despite the closeness of the tally, the phone canvass contains one bit of potentially troubling news for Bergeron. A significant majority of her support has already been announced publicly.

Our phone canvass shows a good deal of unannounced support for Kimball among members of the committee. Of the 73 Republican State Committee members who responded to our canvass and who said they have decided whom they support, 49 say they back Kimball. Only 24 say they back Bergeron.

There are 493 total voters on the committee, so there remain more than enough undecided voters to change the tide. It is common practice for candidates to strategically release endorsements. Both Kimball and Bergeron may have backers who are not yet ready to announce their support publicly.

NH Journal will continue to canvass Republican State Committee members in the coming weeks. The next chairman will be chosen on January 22.

We also asked what committee members want the next chairman to focus most on. Forty-four percent said strengthening the party’s grassroots organization. Twenty-two percent said fundraising. Thirteen percent said defending New Hampshire first-in-the-nation primary. Ten percent said candidate recruitment and another ten percent said the next chair should lobby the legislature to govern like they campaigned.

Silas de Goute

Why is the NJ Journal fudging numbers to get a “dead heat” headline? They didn’t poll the entire membership; shouldn’t the poll be stand alone?
I’m sorry 49-24 isn’t a statistical dead heat.
- Patjhynes
  
  Did you even read the story?
  - Silas de Goute
    
    Yes I read the entire thing. The NH Journal took a poll of 73 committee members; 49 of which supported Kimball 24 of which supported Bergeron. Then they fudge the numbers to make Bergeron look better by adding her public supporters (34 people) and Jack’s public endorsements (8) to get her to 58 and Jack at 57. I’m sorry but that is not an accurate statistical analysis. Most of her “34” are from Cheshire County; so their method is completely unbalanced and inaccurate. The poll of the 73 called may be pure in methodology; but tacking on all the people in cheshire county just because you know them doesn’t provide an accurate overview of the race.
    
    Grassroots efforts was the number one response. Jack seems to be the grassroots candidate; that is to say I’ve seen him out on the street. Bergeron claims to be grass roots but I haven’t seen her out on the streets or really ever heard of her until now.
    - Patjhynes
      
      We didn’t ‘fudge the numbers,’ we added her public support because we want to project an accurate vote count at present. Discounting people who are going to vote for Bergeron just because they know her or are from Cheshire County (much of her public support is not, by the way) would be a terrible mistake on the part of the Kimball forces.
      - Fred Mayhew
        
        When you count up all of the supporters each candidate has released and all those your all called that is a complete accounting. so its a toss up now, your story is spot on and I’m glad folks have a source for reporting on NH stuff like this. Thanks
      - Justice Fraul
        
        It tells me that outside of the numbers Bergeron released; she’s losing 2 to 1. Thats what it tells me.
      - Patjhynes
        
        This is correct. And this is what we reported.
      - Silas de Goute
        
        so how is that a dead heat? ITS NOT. If the poll is representative; shes losing 2 to 1. How can you accurately portray that as a dead heat? 49-24 isn’t even close.
      - Silas de Goute
        
        No Pat what you’ve reported is that its a dead heat; in fact that isn’t even remotely true or accurate.
      - Silas de Goute
        
        How is it a complete accounting when there still remains 378 unaccounted for? Yeah…. thats the problem fred. I guess if you only count one candidate you can fudge the numbers and make them look however you like. I think though that was the journals plan.
      - Silas de Goute
        
        WHAT AN ABSOLUTE JOKE. You mind as well have polled only Cheshire County and call it for Bergeron in a LANDSLIDE.
        
        So if you only polled 5 people and 4 of them were for kimball and 1 of them was for Bergeron you could say its a Landslide because you’d add 34 for Bergeron and call it 35 to 4. A bulk of the people that have come out in support of Bergeron are from Cheshire County. I have no idea what Kimballs plans are; but for whatever reason he hasn’t released committee members that intend to support him. Whereas the poll itself might be valid; fudging the numbers by merging two different methodologies shows no representation whatsoever of the whole body because it becomes an imbalanced sample. Furthermore it implies that the NH Journal polled only those outside of the 42 it added so there are no double responses. Its like saying hey lets poll 115 people; but we’re going to start with Bergeron at 34 and Kimball at 8; ready, set, go! Hardly a random sample Pat
        
        The bias seems pretty clear to this reader; its shameful.
        
        The “58-57” numbers are joke because you are incorporating 2 different methodologies. You do not represent an accurate poll; you’re picking and choosing who to count. You are either biased or foolish.
      - Patjhynes
        
        With all due respect, I fear you are deeply confused. But thanks for reading NH Journal!
      - Silas de Goute
        
        With all due respect I think you are more than confused; so let me lay it out for you. The NH Journal conducted a poll in hopes that Bergeron could use it to her advantage. Calls were made to 100 committee members of which 73 responded (How’d you get the list by the way?) The results came back unexpectedly with Kimball at 49 and Bergeron at 24. In order for a headline to favor Bergeron the team decided “Hey lets add the 40 names that Bergeron already announced and those few (8) that are known Kimball supporters and see what the numbers are). I’m guessing there were 6 members that were robo-called that were already part of Bergeron’s released list; or that weren’t actually voting members.
        
        So in effect the polling methodology used by the Journal is this:
        Lets poll 34 people that we know are Bergeron Supporters
        Lets poll 8 people that we know are Kimball Supporters
        Lets poll 73 people that we don’t know and see where they stand.
        Lets take that total which has a built in bias for Bergeron given she released more names than Kimball, and we say thats the real number.
        
        I’m sorry but if you credit 58-57 as valid representation of the whole you’re nuts and need to learn statistics. If you’re giving us a current count as you know it; great, but with nearly 400 members unaccounted for it doesn’t mean a thing.
        
        Is there anyone that doesn’t work on the NH Journal that understands statistics and pure methodology vice mixed made up methodology? Seriously NH Journal you’re better than this; where has honest reporting gone ?
      - Shawn Millerick
        
        Silas de Goute-thanks for reading and responding, but I think we represented the vote count in the fairest way possible. The Poll does show a 2-1 margin in Kimball’s favor, that is a fact. We wrestled with how to best represent the current tally as we know it, through public endorsements for both in addition to the Poll results. Mr. Kimball has 3 voting members who have gone public and Ms. Bergeron has 38. So we cross-referenced the endorsements with the Polling data to arrive at the “dead heat” result.
      - Silas de Goute
        
        Shawn; you cannot mix apples and oranges. Kimball could have 600 supporters in his back pocket; and all he’d have to do is announce and then you’re “dead heat” is meaningless. You have 115 known of 493 voting members with 42 known; and a 2:1 based on a sample of the unknowns. any statistician would tell you therefore thathe remining unknowns; by representation of your polling data would be likewise 2:1. So If you apply the poll to the 378 unknowns ou’d have 126 more votes for Bergeron; and 252 votes for Kimball bringing the final tally to 184 for Bergeron and 310 for Kimball. That doesn’t appear like a dead heat to me.
        
        This article has been the joke at our office (we do a lot of probability and statistical analysis here). The NH Journal has adopted a humurous method; if you think your data constitutes a dead heat I can only say stick to writing and leave data analysis tothe professionals!
      - Shawnmillerick
        
        Silas-I agree with your assessment regarding apples and oranges, what I failed to mention and incorrectly stated was that this was a poll. This was a “canvass” of voting Party members so we knew who we were contacting and who responded. We took those names and cross-referenced them with public endorsements so as to not have duplicates and voila’, you have the “dead heat” assessment. Hope this clears it up and that you get this-
Mary in NH

Kimball should have won the primary for governor. This state is full of corrupt, establishment republicans. We NEED more Kimballs!

State GOP Chairman’s race a dead heat

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