Marion County Democrats

[Updated at 6:36 p.m. with more response from the Republican chairman, below]

The Marion County political parties have been keeping a lid on their ongoing polling results in the Indianapolis mayor’s race, but a new result today was too good for the Democratic Party to keep to itself. A “strategic memorandum” sent by Chairman Ed Treacy to the media (and presumably some party supporters, given the solicitation for donations at the end) touts the poll’s finding: Democratic challenger Melina Kennedy is at 40 percent support among likely voters, vs. 38 percent for Republican Mayor Greg Ballard and 21 percent undecided. Earlier today, during my interview with Treacy about another topic, the delivery of these results had made Treacy more confident than ever that Kennedy’s victory is all but certain.

But there are some important caveats to this poll: First, Treacy’s release doesn’t specify the margin of error, though surely it’s greater than the 2-percentage-point difference between Kennedy and Ballard.So the best that can be said is that Kennedy and Ballard are about even, by this poll’s finding. Also, this was a poll commissioned by the Marion County Democratic Party. It was conducted by Riggs Research Services locally; I know very little about the firm, which doesn’t seem to have much of a footprint on Google. Whether its polling has any bias, I don’t know — though Democrats say shop leader Jim Riggs’ polling was scarily accurate in many local races last year, in a few cases underestimating Democrats’ support in a few contests in his September 2010 survey.  (Details of the mayoral poll: 403 likely voters were interviewed Tuesday and Wednesday.  The party’s release did not provide information about party association of those polled but says the sample was geographically and demographically representative.)

Republicans immediately disputed the veracity of the poll, asserting that Ballard is up significantly by their own polling. Party Chairman Kyle Walker tweeted this evening: “Marion Co. Dems hire Riggs Research to rig a poll for @MelinaKennedy. Truth is that@BallardforIndy has double digit lead.”

I asked Walker for a fuller response and also asked him to share his party’s latest internal poll. He didn’t send the poll results, but provided this comment by email:

The Democrat Party poll is as credible as Ed Treacy’s negative attacks.  The poll was conducted by the same firm that showed a Democrat leading now-Congressman Marlin Stutzman by 4 points just a few days before the 2010 election and Stutzman won by 30 points.  Our polling indicates Mayor Ballard is leading Melina Kennedy by strong double digits and judging by the 34 point error this pollster made in favor of Democrats last year, you can get a real sense for how strong Ballard’s lead really is.

Treacy, for his part, has always exuded confidence about Kennedy’s prospects against Ballard. And there’s a good strategy in releasing these results. The behind-the-scenes talk (and rumors) have had Kennedy trailing Ballard by differing margins for a while, so Treacy’s trying to shift that narrative to show her surging.

Here’s Treacy’s spin, via his release: “Weeks before outside observers anticipated, Kennedy has taken the lead and is only picking up her pace.  Conventional wisdom dictates that an incumbent below fifty-percent is in trouble.”

He adds his own caveat: “I am as excited as anyone about Melina’s lead.  But our work isn’t done yet.  While it is tempting to use these results to sit back and wait for Election Day, it is now that we must redouble our efforts.  Twenty-one percent of voters are still undecided.  We need to continue to aggressively get our message out to voters.”