Poll out of whack, Lamm campaign chief says

Chris Barge, Rocky Mountain News

Published August 3, 2006 at midnight

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A poll showing Peggy Lamm trailing Ed Perlmutter by 20 points is irrelevant, her campaign manager said Wednesday, pointing to absentee balloting to bolster his point.

The Survey USA poll released by 9News said that of 414 likely voters contacted in suburban Denver's 7th Congressional District, 51 percent said they planned to vote for Perlmutter, compared with 31 percent for Lamm and 10 percent for Herb Rubenstein.

Lamm campaign manager Jim Merlino said those polled don't reflect the breakdown of people expected to vote in Tuesday's Democratic primary.

The voters polled were equally divided between men and women and 27 percent were under 34, 59 percent were 35 to 64 and 16 percent were 65 or older.

But voters who have sent in absentee ballots so far are predominantly older and female. So were voters in the Democratic primary in the 7th district two years ago.

Merlino also pointed to three recent races in other states involving women candidates in which Survey USA polls were significantly off in predicting the outcome.

"There is a pattern with this Survey USA of them being way off, particularly with women," he said.

Survey USA editor Jay Leve said the company stands by its research.

And he said the company's record on calling races is far more often accurate than not.

"The highway to high office is littered with the roadkill of political operatives who find it easier to campaign against Survey USA than their opponents," Leve said.

Merlino responded that he is not campaigning against Survey USA, but takes issue with how this week's poll quizzed the "wrong universe" of voters.

And he said voters may have changed their mind since the poll was conducted, because Lamm has since aired an ad attacking Perlmutter for voting against a law that would have protected rape victims.

"The problem with the poll is it was done before voters knew that Ed Perlmutter believes that rapists and child molesters have more rights than the women and children who are the victims of the rapists and molesters," Merlino said.

Republican campaign consultant Katy Atkinson said she still thinks the race is neck-and-neck.

"It's not the kind of poll I would base campaign decisions on," she said.

Perlmutter's supporters have lambasted Lamm's ad for misrepresenting the reason Perlmutter voted against a bill that would have allowed police to use DNA evidence in rape cases more than 10 years old. Perlmutter, a lawyer, said he voted against the measure because it was unconstitutional and sloppily written.

"What is very clear is that Peggy Lamm's campaign is on fire and is imploding in front of our eyes," Perl-mutter campaign spokesman Scott Chase said. "She is bringing up old attacks that have no validity and represent scorched-earth campaign politics in the last five days of the campaign."

bargec@RockyMountainNews.com or (303) 892-5059

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