An update of sorts – Remember the poll publicized by Republican state Assemblyman Greg Ball’s Congressional campaign, the one that had him within five points of U.S. Rep. John Hall? According to an update in Roll Call, the poll didn’t sample the entire Congressional district and oversampled Putnam County, Ball’s home base.

Such a practice is uncommon, according to Hall’s campaign.

“The Ball campaign has intentionally misled people with a poll that is not districtwide,” Hall campaign pollster Jef Pollock of Global Strategy Group said in an e-mail to Roll Call. “In all my years of polling, I can’t recall an incident where a person did a poll in only of PART of the district and attempted to call it valid.”

An internal poll released this week by New York Assemblyman Greg Ball’s® campaign that showed him in a competitive position in his challenge to Rep. John Hall (D) did not represent a cross section of voters from the entire 19th district but rather two-thirds of the district — Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess counties, in the east.
The poll excluded Orange County and the portion of Rockland County in the district. Hall defeated challenger Kieran Michael Lalor (R ) by about 8,000 votes in that western segment of the district in 2008. The poll also oversampled Putnam County, which accounts for about 15 percent of the district’s voters but accounted for 33 percent in the poll. The survey undersampled Dutchess County and to a lesser degree Westchester County.
Hall’s campaign cried foul because it is uncommon for campaigns to release polls that aren’t a reflection of the entire district.
“The Ball campaign has intentionally misled people with a poll that is not districtwide,” Hall campaign pollster Jef Pollock of Global Strategy Group said in an e-mail. “In all my years of polling, I can’t recall an incident where a person did a poll in only of PART of the district and attempted to call it valid.”
Pollock also hypothesized that perhaps the reason the poll did not cover the entire Congressional district is because the questions related to the 19th district were added to a poll being conducted for another campaign, such as a state Senate candidate’s.
“I would hope that all [Federal Election Commission] laws were adhered to and this wasn’t an in kind contribution from a state poll,” he said.
Todd Vitale of Vitale & Associates, the firm that conducted the poll, said the Ball campaign commissioned it but chose to focus only on what he deemed the most historically competitive areas of the district out of a “desire to conserve resources at this stage of the campaign.”
“As the campaign progresses, we’ll do a more traditional poll,” he said.
Jim Coleman, a spokesman for Ball’s campaign, also defended the poll.
“We wanted to see where we stood and we specifically wanted to see how close the race was on the eastern side of the Hudson, because we consider that to be the toughest area,” Coleman said in an e-mail. “That said, these are just the early results of our first wave of polling, we should have more in depth analysis next week, and we are extremely encouraged.”