Two percent. That’s the percent of voters outside the “Motor City” that have a favorable impression of embattled Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. You don’t have to be a pollster to understand how strongly disliked Kilpatrick is throughout Michigan.
Sit in any restaurant or bar, and all you hear is people talking about Kilpatrick’s troubles. Indicted in March on eight felony counts for committing perjury during a whistleblower trial that eventually cost the city about $9 million, the Mayor spent one night in jail on August 7th for violating his bond and then was arraigned the next day for a new crime. In the latest charges, Kilpatrick is accused of assaulting two sheriff’s deputies as they were trying to serve one of his close friends with a subpoena.
And, what does this have to do with Barack Obama? Although Kilpatrick has distanced himself from Obama and Obama has distanced himself from Kilpatrick, they are both inextricably linked to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And, that is Obama’s problem.
Read More of The Obama/Wright/Kilpatrick Collision off-site...
MI journalist says:
You don't have to be a pollster to understand why you shouldn't listen to Steve Mitchell when it comes to his alleged insight into Michigan's racial politics.
Two years ago the biggest issue in the state election was a ballot initiative to ban affirmative action.
Mr. Mitchell's poll found the measure would be rejected by a significant margin (more than 15 percent). He said this in at least a dozen state papers, public forums, on tv and on radio.
Problem is, he was wrong. Way wrong, the measure passed by even more than 15 percent.
Mr. Mitchell ended up being 40 percent off.
A pollster is only useful if they can get the result to within 10 percent, less than that and an educated guess is more accurate.
Every single other major pollster in the state found opposite results as Mr. Mitchell.
I was a journalist who interviewed Mr. Mitchell and quoted his poll. I later felt compelled to run a retraction for the poll numbers I printed because of him (I used other accurate polls that didn't embarrass my paper).
I've looked for other examples of pollsters being 20 percent off but even when its push polls, biased pollsters and leading questions I have been unable to find a single case of a pollster being more than 20 percent wrong on a major poll. Mr. Mitchell's poll is quite literally twice as bad as the very worst designed, conducted and interpreted poll I have ever found.
I am not the only journalist who doesn't use his material anymore because of poor methods and bad interpretation.
It's amazing to think that Mr. Mitchell has improved his methods so much since then that he can offer any sort of insight to Michigan's race-based politics.