Bruce Merrill, ASU’s liberal pollster, was gloating about his polling accuracy in the papers a few weeks back. In particular, he took a cheap shot at some of our supporters who apparently contacted him and questioned his competency.
His final poll, two weeks before the election, had me losing by 43 and the marriage amendment losing by 26. His poll claimed a 3 percent margin of error.
In my race, he was off by about 16 points. On the marriage amendment, he was off by 23. Nothing happened in either of those races in the final two weeks to explain an average 20-point shift.
Dirk Koetter did much better as ASU’s football coach than Merrill does as ASU’s pollster. And look what happened to Koetter.
Of course, people actually cared about Koetter’s job performance.
