A week or so ago I posted results of a cell phone poll by the Robbins for Mayor campaign. That poll used a list of likely Republican voters for the last few campaigns. The article did trigger a few fairly pointed and accurate comments from valued correspondents. One pointed out that it was the worst sort of push poll. The other pointed out that it did not include likely democrat voters. Both were pretty decent observations and pointed the way for additional questions on my part.
I got back in touch with my contact and requested the results when they did a similar poll for likely democrat voters. Like the first, this one was conducted via cell phone SMS text message. Unlike the first one, this one attempted to capture likely democrat voters rather than Republican ones. Think of it as the missing half to the original story.
The results to that poll were released yesterday by the Robbins campaign. There were over 11,600 texts sent, with 1,160 responses, with about a 10% engagement rate.
The top three results show undecided in the lead with 34% of respondents, followed by Forrest Dunbar at 23%, and Mike Robbins at 13%. The margin of error is +/- 4%. The remaining 30% of the total was not broken down nor detailed results released. Individually none of the other candidates received anything larger than 13% of the total.
As with the first poll, this is a snapshot of the race as it exists today. There will be other polls and I will publish the results as they come across the transom. My thinking is that each snapshot is simply that, a picture of the electorate at that point in time, a photo of an object in motion.
The other observation is that Robbins appears to be benefiting from something Donald Trump did in his run for President. While he did run as a Republican, he did not explicitly run as an ideologue. At least three of the current mayoral candidates have intentionally taken up their favorite ideological banner – right, middle and left – and are proudly waving it, using it as the foundation of their run for office. Could it be that the voters in Anchorage are so far rejecting that sort of campaign in favor of something else?
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
