Siena poll

Nobody fools me three times and gets away with it. The folks at Siena have come out with a poll saying the race for County Executive is a statistical dead heat. This was the same group whose numbers had Rick Lazio trouncing Carl Paladino a few days before the reverse happened. They also had the mayoral race between Mickey Kearns and Steve Casey as being "too close to call" a week before the election. We all know how that one turned out.

What their polling does not measure is city vs. suburban voter turnout. Being politically correct, they assume it is going to be the same in both areas. That's like assuming parents of Williamsville North students and parents of Burgard students are both as likely to show up to a parent/teacher conference at their child's school...

Siena pollsters estimated that one-quarter of the turnout in the race Nov. 8 will come from the city, a percentage the county executive's supporters believe is too high and should discredit the poll that showed Collins leading Poloncarz by a slim 49 to 46 percent tally. The poll has a margin for error of plus or minus 3.4 percent.

"We made no assumptions on what turnout will be in the City of Buffalo, nor can they," said Siena spokesman Steven A. Greenberg. "Nobody can factually make that assumption."

That's mighty white of him to say, but I can. City voters are less likely to show up and vote in a race when there is no minority candidate. The opposite happened in the mayoral race. That poll assumed whites and minorities would show up in equal numbers, but minorities came out in droves to support Brown. And that was a rarity, considering both candidates in that race were white. Collins 62% Poloncarz 37% The Rooster 1%
Collins campaign denounces recent poll

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