23 October 2018 — 1956 mdt

MTN-MSU poll, already old, is being released too slowly

This evening, the poll’s results on the U.S. House election were released. Not to my surprise, Gianforte is leading Williams by 7.5 points. The crosstabs will be available tomorrow morning.

The schedule posted at MSU’s HELPlabs indicates findings on the ballot measures will be released Thursday, and more information will be released Friday. This dribbling out of the results is standard news media marketing practice, designed to draw a big audience every night for a week. The Lee Newspapers used to do the same thing with their election year polls, which usually were conducted by Mason-Dixon.

This is too slow. Election month concludes the evening of 6 November. The poll was open 15 September to 6 October. Processing required two weeks. That’s moving fast enough if the poll is for sniffing out the acceptance of a new perfume. But it’s too slow for an election.

At least the MSU poll’s methodology seems sound. On balance, the poll is a credit to MSU and counters the embarrassment caused by the Big Sky Poll out of the ever shrinking University of Montana.