McHenry County Blog

The Crystal Lake Library from the parking lot.

Crystal Lake Library card holder Stephen Willson is on a mission.

You can read his analysis of the Library’s expansion plans here. There have been ten comments so far, including one that started, “This is the most informative article I have read concerning the Library expansion…”

Now Willson reports on a survey he took of patrons at the Library.

Of 58 people he asked, 50 participated.

They, Library personnel “shooed” him away.

Here’s what he found:

“The Crystal Lake Library Board says the library is so crowded it needs to be twice as large as it is now and needs a parking garage, too.

“In 22 years, I’ve never felt crowded there, and I’ve never had a problem finding a parking space, either.

“But I believe public policy decisions should be based on hard evidence, so I decided to stand outside the library and conduct a survey.

“Eventually I was shooed away by the library staff, but not before I got 50 responses. Here are the results.

• “What percent of the time have you been UNABLE TO FIND A PARKING SPACE?
  74%, NEVER; weighted response rate, 1.5% of the time
• “What percent of the time have you had to WAIT TWO WEEKS or more for a book or movie you wanted?
  62%, NEVER; weighted response rate, 7.6% of the time
• What percent of the time do you FEEL CROWDED in the library?
  80%, NEVER; weighted response rated, 4.3% of the time

“As a professional researcher with more than 30 years experience, I followed good survey protocol.

“The subjects were randomly selected, not self-selected, as in online surveys.

“I was careful to ask every question exactly the same way.

“And I was careful not to identify whether I was with the library or for the library or against the library. The sample size is large enough for statistically significant results.

“The response rate was 86%, which is very good.

“I think the data speak for themselves.

“If the library wishes to confirm or dispute my data by conducting their own properly structured and executed survey, that would be great.

“Of course, they’ll have to stand on the sidewalk or get shooed away.”

There is a subtle way to skew polling numbers. Especially when polls in the last month of various races are of likely voters as compared to registered voters.

The technique centers around these basic facts:

• The highest voter turnout for a midterm election since 1960 was when it hit 48.4 percent in 1966.
• In 2006 it was 37.1 %
• In 2002 it was 37.0 %

The turnout info was found here.

What some pollsters recently did for certain polls was to make the cut off for “likely voters” such that it excluded only 6 percent of registered voters, for example.

This skews the results because you are sampling far more registered Democrats and Democrat leaning independents. And plenty of people who are really not going to vote.

Newspapers with liberal leaning editors I suspect also allow their polls to be structured like this.

I suspect that you can’t reliably predict turnout for this election based on historical numbers for turnout.

Why? I have never seen an electorate so stirred up and eager to say “We’re not going to take this nonsense anymore.”

I think we will see a normal backlash from a majority of people who will take the time to vote.

Liberal journalists and commentators call this “anger.

I think it’s more likely disgust.

It is a normal reaction to yell, “Stop!” when your child, children or family members are about to permanently injured.

Or put in debt hole they will have a very hard time climbing out of.

It is a normal reaction to do something about the people who caused the problem and threaten to take even more money out of your family’s wallet.

The paper that has done everything it could to make sure that 8th District Congresswoman Melissa Bean gets re-elected is running a major article in Sunday’s.

The Daily Herald's web site headline on the article.

Melissa Bean

Joe Walsh

Lowering the risk of being on the wrong side is my guess.

The Daily Herald relentlessly publicized Republican challenger Joe Walsh’s financial woes with regard to a condo purchase gone bad, plus other stuff that I can’t remember.

The effort to make certain that liberal Melissa Bean had no significant opposition was so blatant that I thought at the time the paper should send Bean a statement estimating the value of its in-kind campaign contribution to her.

But now reporter Kimberly Pohl has been tasked to try to explain why Walsh is still in the race. It’s as if she had read my article explaining the New York Times blogger Nate Silver having lowered Bean’s odds of winning from 97.8% to 80.6%.

Results from the We Ask America phone poll. Click to enlarge.

This comes over two weeks after a very large (1,381–the largest I have ever seen in a congressional race–We Ask America telephone poll showed a 41% to 41% tie, with Green Party candidate Bill Scheurer getting 5%.

That, bizarrely, showed up in the Quincy Herald-Whig.

Strangely enough, the poll interviewed 56.1% woman and and 43.88% men.

This is what pollsters call "cross tabs."

Most neutral observers would suggest than overweights women. And since women were going for Bean 44% to 40% , maybe the survey really indicated that Walsh was ahead.

The article ends by summarizing University of Illinois at Springfield Professor Kent Redfield cautioning “that no Democrat in a potential swing district should feel safe, particularly with such strong anti-incumbent sentiment.”

A pollster for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Schillerstrom called yesterday afternoon.

Schillerstrom is DuPage County Board Chairman.

The pollster wanted to know if I would vote for Schillerstrom for governor.

I told her, “No.”

She didn’t ask why, but, if she had I had an answer.

I would have told her that I was really disturbed that he balanced his DuPage County budget by getting most of his county’s state senators to vote to triple my RTA sales tax.

The bill that eventually passed, after an amendment (allowing collar county board’s to use the quarter of a percent sales tax offer of free road money for collar county boards to be diverted to public safety purposes) was added.

That allowed Schillerstrom to forego an already-on-the ballot countywide referendum to raise sales taxes one-quarter of one percentage point for law enforcement to fill his budget hole. (Winnebago County passed such a referendum in 2002.)

Schillerstrom’s intervention was so egregious that he was taken to the wood shed by Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna at the Decatur state convention last June.

That made Schillerstrom hopping mad.

It stung so much most DuPage County Republicans walked off the convention floor.

Later my wife and I got a letter from Schillerstrom about it.

Schillerstrom let his state senators take the heat.

He got “free money.”

How ironic that one of them, Kirk Dillard is also running for the Republican nomination for governor.

But, the pollster was onto her next question. No time for an explanation on my part.

She asked if I would be more likely to vote for Schillerstrom if I knew I knew he had lowered property taxes seven ten years in 10 years.

I told her, “Yes.”

Would I be more likely to vote for Schillerstrom if I knew he had cut $200 million in wasteful spending?

I told her, “Yes.”

The final question was whether I would be more likely to vote for Schillerstrom if I knew DuPage County had passed “comprehensive ethics reform.”

I told her, “Yes.”

Do you see television and radio ads coming out of this survey?

= = = = =
The photo of DuPage County Board Chairman Robert Schillerstrom comes from the Young Republican Candidates’ Bar-B-Que held in Barrington Saturday, August 11, 2009.

April 14th, a pollster called one of McHenry County Blog’s friends in Algonquin.

Here’s my contact’s description of the phone call:

She said she was located in Asia and representing Western Wats. I tried to jot down her questions, not word for word, for you;

1. Will you vote in the Republican primary for IL governor?

2. Is IL heading in the wrong or right direction?

3. Approve or disapprove of the job state legislature is doing?

4. Who would you likely vote for governor? This was her list to choose from;

• Joe Birkett
• health care
• Kirk Dillard
• Bill Brady
• Doug Whitley
• Dan Proft
• Tom Cross
• Bob Schillerstrom
• Ron Gidwitz

5. What issue(s) concern you or you think legislature should focus? She
quickly read off this list;

• abortion
• lowering taxes
• reform and ethics
• improving education
• reducing crime
• family values
• wasteful state spending
• Second Amendment rights
• protecting the environment
• creating jobs/improve state economy

6. Do you subscribe to cable or satellite TV?

7. Who is your provider?

8. How often do you watch:
MSNBC; daily, few times a week, once a month, etc.,
Fox News; daily, few times a week, once a month, etc.,
CNBC; daily, few times a week, once a month, etc.

9. Do you listen to the radio?
How often do you listen to Hannity?
Limbaugh?

10. What year were you born?

11. Are you Evangelical or born-again Christian?

12. Support or oppose abortion?

You can pretty well guess that the person paying for the survey research is listed among the names read.

If anyone else gets a political polling call, please make notes and let me share them with McHenry County Blog readers.

= = = = =
Seen on top are Joe Birkett on the left and Kirk Dillard to his left. Next comes Bill Brady. Under him is a photo of Ron Gidwitz. Dan Proft is to the left. Below him is Tom Cross.

Have you ever been called by the Gallup Poll?

We were a couple of days ago.

When my wife saw who was calling, she looked at the caller ID and told me it was for me.

But, it turns out that it wasn’t.

The caller wanted the person in the household whose birthday was closest.

That wasn’t me.

Phooey.

And I already knew she didn’t want to be interviewed, so the poll taken thanked me and dialed again.

I wonder what the survey was about.

Have you ever been called by the Gallup Poll?

We were a couple of days ago.

When my wife saw who was calling, she looked at the caller ID and told me it was for me.

But, it turns out that it wasn’t.

The caller wanted the person in the household whose birthday was closest.

That wasn’t me.

Phooey.

And I already knew she didn’t want to be interviewed, so the poll taken thanked me and dialed again.

I wonder what the survey was about.