Ed Fallon, Lying Again

In an interview with a progressive blog today, Ed Fallon claimed, “We’re doing really well, our own internal polling shows us up.” It’s not a surprise for Fallon to make a claim when the Boswell campaign released its own internal from Anzalone Lizst, the firm that polled for new Democratic Congressmen Don Cazayoux and Travis Childers, that had Boswell receiving 65% of the vote.

This jibes with the KCCI poll that had Boswell winning by a two to one margin. However, Fallon’s campaign finance reports, which show him having only $28,000 on hand the day before he had to meet payroll, does not show him spending any money on pollsters. (Nor does it show him spending on money on television, radio, mail, newspaper advertisements or any other form of paid media) So if Ed Fallon hasn’t hired a pollster and can’t afford to pay one, why does he claim he has internal polling, let alone internal polling that seems at odds with all the other information about this race?

Our guess is that Ed Fallon probably took a survey, not a poll. A survey is unscientific and involves asking a bunch of people without dealing with complicated things like sample size or filtering likely voters. This means that Ed Fallon may actually be ahead according to his “polling”, provided, of course, that a third of the electorate are vegetarians from Sherman Hill and everyone who votes outside Polk County is a member of CCI. Then again, this blog may be given Fallon too much credit for assuming that he merely mistook the difference between a survey and a poll. (Which is covered the second week of Statistics 101).

Fallon has a history of lying and of sleazy behavior. He may have just made up his “internal polling” entirely, which would be a good deal for Fallon. After all, the less he spends on internal polling, the more money he can pay himself.

16 comments May 22nd, 2008