Given the opportunity to watch Monday night’s debate between incumbent Republican Senator George Allen and Democratic challenger Jim Webb, 69% of those surveyed chose to watch something else. Another 1% weren’t sure. How can you not be sure if you watched something?
About the only thing that could make me feel more disappointed in the numbers is that if those surveyed were likely voters. As it was, the survey was not even of registered voters. Given that it was just a survey of 1,000 adults, I don’t think we should draw any conclusions from it.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
For some reason, no one is looking at this the same way I am (must mean I’m wrong). Let’s assume the 1000 people called were all of voting age. That means 30% of the voting age population in Virginia took an hour out of their lives to take part in the political process. That number is HUGE. Put it in perspective. Something like 4% of potential voters voted in the Democratic primary. Let’s double that to account for 2 parties and you have
I agree with Virginian, that 30% of those polled actually took the time to pay attention to this debate is a good sign, especially for an off year election. Beyond that, sure, the numbers are kinda questionable and don’t really differentiate between whether you though someone won and if you’d still vote for them (a good number of Dems might have felt Allen won and vice versa). They’re just news fodder for the week.
Virginian – that’s one way of looking at it. But what percentage of the voting age population is registered? (A honest question, BTW. I don’t know the answer.) The only thing I was thinking about is that there is such a drop off between registered voters and likely voters, that surveying adults is a much larger pool.
And Jason, you’re right – the rest of the numbers mean little.
1000 adults is actually a pretty decent sample size, though the range of plus/minus 5.8 percent in the likeability questions should say that the people questioned were probably skewed slightly toward a particular demographic.
Based on the news reports of Allen, you’d have to say that the fact that people did not perceive that he came off as a drooling idiot in the debate would suggest that people were more favorable of him.
The most interesting numbers are the 32 and 26 percent did not change opinion. These are probably a large majority of the sure thing votes for each candidate. They are basically battling for the other 25 to 40 percent.
The 1,000 sampled was OK. The problem was that when you look at the 301 who watched the debate, not only is the MOE high, but that is just too small a sample to draw conclusions from.