Jene Thomas – General Assignment Reporter
According to Jennifer Dineen, director of the University of Connecticut poll, polls are the basis of discussion and debate during elections.
“Polls are descriptive, they are not predictive,” said Dineen.
On Oct. 6, the Adanti Student Center at Southern Connecticut State University hosted “Election 2014: Polls, Pundits & Popcorn” in the ballroom to share election trends, predictions and campaign strategies.
The event featured a panel of speakers, familiar with government elections and polls, analyzed the rise in negativity within campaign ads for the 2014 Gubernatorial Elections throughout the country, but specifically between Governor Dannel Malloy and Tom Foley.
“The speakers today are not going to try to influence your vote,” said Bette Berguson, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, “because that is your decision.”
People can find out what is happening in the election and public opinion for each opponent from polls in that day, but they do not determine who will win in the final election, Dineen said.
As a comparison to election polls, she used the weather.
“Much in the same way that noticing that it is sunny and beautiful outside today has no way of telling us what the weather is going to be like next Monday, it is important to know that what we are seeing is pictures,” Dineen said.
Because the polls represent a specific time during the election period, she said it was important to look at multiple polls to get a more accurate sense of what is happening throughout.
When she presented recent polls of Foley and Malloy, with Foley ahead by two out of the three polling stations, she said the numbers only show public opinion in that moment in time.
Because polls feature random sampling online, Dineen wanted to know if more people were voting for Foley because they thought he was the better candidate or because they were against Malloy. In her survey, she learned that 60 percent of Foley’s voters more so voted against Malloy than voting specifically for Foley.
Speakers agreed that the negativity didn’t just lie within the voters.
“A big thing we’re seeing in the election is negativity,” guest speaker Laura Baum said.
Baum is the project manager of the Wesleyan Media Project, a group from Wesleyan University that analyze the broadcast advertisements aired during congressional, gubernatorial and presidential campaigns.
At the event, Baum showed the audience different clips from national congressional and gubernatorial races, all of which featured attacks of the campaign’s opponents.
In her presentation, the statistics of negativity in elections showed that the state only has eight percent of its campaign ads showing positive stances. With 26 percent of them being neutral, 66 percent of Connecticut’s ads are negative. Conn was ranked third in the country for least positive gubernatorial ads, following Maryland at 82 percent and Illinois at 72 percent for negativity.
Towards the end of the event, CT News Junkie Editor Christine Stuart came to the stage to moderate and introduce the speakers who would answer audience questions. In addition to Baum and Dineen, the audience welcomed Dr. Arthur Paulson, political science department chairman here at Southern, as well as political science professors Dr. Gary Rose of Sacred Heart University and Dr. Scott McLean of Quinnipiac University.
One student from the crowd asked the panel if current elections between the democrats and the republicans in the congressional races had any impact on the president’s final two years in office, to which Dr. Rose said “not at all.”
Six high schools from the surrounding areas were in attendance to the event, many of whom are soon to be 18 and therefore eligible to vote in upcoming elections. The speakers said voting was not only a privilege, but also a responsibility.
“Elections are often the most important time to have your voice heard,” said Berguson.
Photo Credit: Monica Zielinski
