MA-SEN: Scott Brown's own pollster disputes Suffolk University poll.

[RandySF]

The issue on the Suffolk survey is similar to a criticism leveled earlier this month by Mitt Romney campaign pollster Neil Newhouse about a recent ABC News/Washington Post survey. Newhouse argued that just before measuring the Barack Obama-Romney sentiment, the pollsters asked a series of questions that "introduced specific negative information about Governor Romney." These included a set of questions about three candidates -- Romney, Newt Gingrich and President Obama -- as well as several more specific items about Romney. These included a question about whether, given his "work as a corporate investor ... Mitt Romney did more to create jobs or more to cut jobs," and a question asking whether Romney "is or is not paying his fair share of taxes" having "paid about a 14% federal tax rate on income of about 22 million dollars last year."

Asked to comment by the The Huffington Post, Newhouse -- who is also the pollster for Scott Brown -- said that the criticisms he leveled against the ABC/Washington Post poll would "absolutely" apply to the Suffolk poll, "though not to the same degree" as the ABC/Post poll.

David Paleologos, the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, told The Huffington Post that he doubts the questions he asked just before the Brown-Warren vote question "will have an order effect, per the [academic] literature," which he regards as "inconclusive." He also noted that responses to the two questions asked just before the vote "broke fairly close," adding "it's not like [these] questions broke 70-30 or something like that."

Peleologos also pointed to the accuracy of their past polling, particularly the survey released just five days before the January 2010 special election, one of the first to show Scott Brown leading Democrat Martha Coakley. Although "mindful of what some of the other polls have shown," he expressed confidence that the Senate race has been "trending to Brown" who has "been doing a lot of radio."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/17/massachusetts-senate-race-poll_n_1285549.html?ref=@pollster

[southernyankeebelle]

1. Come on Warren get it together.