Brockton Enterprise – Clyde Barrow Commentary: Poll was accurate indicator of people’s views on power plant

Commentary: Poll was accurate indicator of people’s views on power plant

By Clyde Barrow
Brockton Enterprise
August 14, 2009

BROCKTON —

After reading The Enterprise’s story (“Power plant gets support,” Aug. 9) and editorial (“Survey says little about power plant,” Aug. 11) about the poll conducted by the Center for Policy Analysis on the proposed natural gas power plant, I am truly shocked by the misleading statements about the poll reported in your newspaper.

According to the editors of The Enterprise, the poll “has several major flaws,” but the only flaw I detected is that the findings were not to the liking of your editors, prominent public officials, and a few vocal residents who have long opposed the construction of the proposed power plant.

First, The Enterprise asserts that the “foremost problem is that the poll was commissioned and paid for by Advanced Power. So even though it was conducted by the Center for Policy Analysis at UMass-Dartmouth, it’s not fair to call it objective.”

The Center for Policy Analysis has no position on the power plant and, as an organization that has conducted polls on numerous issues over the last 15 years, we are politically indifferent to the final results. We report the facts objectively, although we are accustomed to the political reality that activists and politicians on any side of an issue will always criticize poll results when those findings reveal that they are not speaking for the public.

The objectivity of a poll has nothing to do with who paid for it, because objectivity is a function of the methodology employed in conducting the poll. As we documented to The Enterprise, the Center for Policy Analysis employed best practices in conducting the poll, including the use of a random sample telephone survey conducted with the most up-to-date polling technology available in the world. It is the same methodology used in virtually every poll conducted by every polling organization in the United States and we employ the same methodology in all polls regardless of the issue.

Thus, I am truly astounded by the remarkable ignorance about survey research demonstrated by (Kathryn) Archard, an instructor at Bridgewater State College, when she points out the obvious fact that “the number of respondents, 401, represents just 1 percent of the city’s voters and .4 percent of the city’s population.”

Pollsters and those who react to polls — like the media – are well aware that 401 responses is a standard sample size with a margin of error of +/- 4.9 percent at a 95 percent confidence interval. This random sample is sufficient to guarantee that the results are an accurate measure of Brockton’s registered voters.
Furthermore, whether this or that respondent lives in Ward 4 is not relevant to the overall findings, because it wasn’t a poll of Ward 4, but a random sample cross-section of the entire city.

Finally, Mayor James E. Harrington commented that, “It’s always how you ask the questions.” He is correct. However, in this case, the question could not have been posed any simpler. One of the first questions in the poll — long before any statements were read for or against the project — was, “Do you favor or oppose the construction of a new natural gas power plant in Brockton’s Oak Hill Industrial Park?”

Our finding was that 41 percent favor its construction, 31 percent oppose it, and 28 percent are undecided. The question is fairly phrased and provides a scientifically valid measure of the views of registered voters. As for diesel fuel, our poll specifically asked a question about it — which the Enterprise failed to report — and we found that the use of diesel as a backup fuel did not significantly affect voters’ views about the plant.

The real problem with the Center for Policy Analysis poll is that public officials, newspaper editors and opponents of the plant must now confront the fact that more registered voters in Brockton support the construction of a new natural gas power plant in Brockton than oppose it. That is a fact. Now, please don’t shoot the messenger. The poll results are available at www.umassd.edu/cfpa under “What’s New!”

Clyde Barrow is the director of the Center for Policy Analysis at UMass- Dartmouth.