A friend of the blog from Brookings County received a call purporting to be from Milbank yesterday evening. His phone flagged the number as likely junk, so he ignored it. Thirty minutes later, his girlfriend (they were together, getting ready to go out) received a call from the same Milbank-tagged number. She took the call and was asked, by a human working for VuPoint Research of Portland, Oregon, if she thought South Dakota was headed in the right direction.
Is this a political poll? my friend’s girlfriend asked. The pollster responded that, no, it was an issues-based poll.
Suspicious and curious, my friend urged his girlfriend to stay on the line and hear this poll out. Here’s what we heard (based on my incomplete and edited recollection of what my friends described last night):
VuPoint Research proceeded to ask what sure sounded like political poll questions. They are asking if respondents have an impression of each of our three Republican members of Congress. In a clear shift of language, they then ask if respondents approve of the jobs being done by Kristi Noem, Donald Trump, and the state legislature. They ask if respondents approve impeachment and removal of Trump—not two separate questions, only the single full-Monty option, thus meaning the question does not capture a reasonable middle-grounder who may support sending articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial but isn’t yet ready to convict.
VuPoint Research threw in a question about approval of the Public Utilities Commission. Seriously, who polls on the PUC?
VuPoint Research finally got to some issue questions. They asked multiple questions about wind energy, offering opposing opinions on job creation, effects on scenery, tax incentives, government regulation, and other wind-related issues and asking respondents to state which one they are more inclined to agree with. Each question seemed a bit sloppy, offering multiple reasons within each opposing opinion and thus confusing the meaning of the degree of an attentive respondent’s agreement or disagreement: offer three reasons to vote yes, two of which are o.k. but one of which is flat wrong, does the one bad reason trump the others and make the respondent “strongly disagree”, or does the respondent average the quality of each reason and say “somewhat agree”?
The poll then switched to industrial hemp. VuPoint posed one question, an opposing opinion question with the same problematic multiple reasons on each side. But this one hemp question had a key difference: where every other question and even the affirmative side of this one attributed its positions to generic speakers, the negative side of the hemp question was packaged as, “I agree with Governor Kristi Noem…” followed by nationally broadcast and embarrassingly easy to debunk.
The poll asks respondents to identify themselves politically on a conservative–liberal spectrum. It poses a few other demographic questions.
While we wait to see if anyone publishes results of this survey, we can chew over these questions:
- Why ask different questions—general impression vs. job approval—about of members of Congress and our other political leaders?
- Why include the PUC?
- Of all pressing political issues that could reveal South Dakota voters’ opinions, why ask about wind power, why ask about industrial hemp, and why ask about those two issues together?
- Why ask about impeachment and removal in a poll that otherwise focuses entirely on South Dakota issues and offices?
- Is this a poorly constructed poll? Is it a poll with multiple purposes, ordered by a potential candidate seeking some baseline public-approval data right now and who thought, heck, while I’m at it, let’s get data on public sentiment on wind power for my friends on the PUC? Or is there a way to piece all of these questions into a coherent picture, driven by a single objective?
If VuPoint Research calls you with this poll, let me know if I’ve gotten the questions right or left out any key points. And if you see a unifying political purpose behind those questions, lay your hypothesis out in the comment section!
Hmmmmmm, interesting indeed. The possibilities are endless, but I would bet that all the loose strings eventually wind to an identifiable rope with a clear and defined purpose.
Some hypotheses,
1) Team Kristi is running the poll – makes sense because there are a wide array of SD only issues (PUC), the DC people and Trump stuff gives them an idea of how the wind is blowing so they can set their sails and not get caught out on the wrong side here, it also explains the “You agree with Governor Noem” language. But why would they spend money on a poll like this right now is the question (VP considerations perhaps?????)
2) national dems are running the poll – Perhaps the DNC or a large liberal org is looking for cracks in the deep red midwest, did some cursory research to find some hot button issues (wind farms tied to climate change perhaps?) and are seeing where the splits are
3) splinter group (or individual) SDGOPer – think Scyller Borglum, looking for inroads into the hearts and minds of every day South Dakotans, someone looking to challenge a specific current office holder but needs to find out where they can plant their flag first.
NREL engineer on the challenges of more wind power on the grid
https://energynews.us/2019/10/18/west/nrel-engineer-on-the-grand-challenges-of-supersizing-wind-power-on-the-grid/
*There are gaps in the understanding of wind in the atmosphere to max out how much energy can be captured, particularly at certain heights in the atmosphere.
*Larger wind turbines are more efficient, but they become more difficult to transport as they get larger. You may have to build those on-site instead of shipping them by interstate. Plus to make them more cost-effective, they have to last longer while being cheaper.
*Variability on the grid will continue to be an issue.
*You’ve invested time, money, and effort to build a wind farm with giant turbines at site A. But due to climate change site B is now the better location. Good news…you can’t move the giant turbines from site A over to site B due to transportation issues.
Better news, you can leave the giant turbines on site A and put new ones on Site B… Problem addressed and problem solved. Next
Very interesting. And very haphazard. I think NoMa’am must have something to do with it, since the pollster encouraged the interviewee to agree with her.
They only make money if they generate energy and the consumer pays for it. If they don’t make money, they won’t get built. Next.
Let’s focus on the poll and its origins, please.
Southsider, I share your skepticism of the poll originating with Noem. Why would she poll right now? She got all the polling she needed on hemp from the Legislature. She knows she’s in a small minority on hemp, and she doesn’t care. Besides, she doesn’t need to brace for campaigning for another couple years. Spending money on polling data now doesn’t seem to do her much good or inform any action that she wouldn’t take anyway.
Borglum likely isn’t the source: she’s only raised $10K from other people, and she needs every penny for travel and name recognition, not polling. And she’s running against Rounds for Congress, so polling on hemp doesn’t give her much info to use against Rounds. Wind power doesn’t sound like a great distinguishing issue for the primary, either. And why would Borglum, or any potential GOP challenger, include the PUC question?
OK Cory. Why are they polling about wind? Are they getting pushback when they try to site more wind turbines?
Impossible not to make money on energy. I think where the real money is would be to build regional or local providers like in the past. Recently, San Francisco offered to buy the infrastructure that PG&E has failed consistently on. PB&E is poorly run and is now in protection
“San Francisco city officials are offering to purchase PG&E’s electrical grid in the city for $2.5 billion, according to a letter sent to the utility on Friday by Mayor London Breed and City Attorney Dennis Herrera.
The city has been considering a purchase since the utility filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January as it faced mounting liability for wildfires sparked by its equipment. City officials are arguing that San Francisco could provide power that is more affordable, more reliable and safer than PG&E does in the city.” https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion
Who could argue that? Each year, we face more and more time of power outages in our rural areas that are completely unnecessary. Put those aged systems underground.
Side question, when will the state and federal governments finally decide to inform farmers about climate change and what the long term plan will be for them and their products? Of the almost 150 Billion the USDA gets a year, only 0.03 percent goes to educating farmers on how to adapt to the climate change. And then we ask, why aren’t we prepared for the devastation caused? To easy to be corrupted and exploited I guess.
https://newrepublic.com/article/155403/american-farming-runs-exploitation
If you are in favor of wind, you don’t want your proposed balkanization of the energy market to occur. That would make sending wind energy elsewhere much more difficult (and expensive) to do. A decentralized grid with energy storage is a different story, but we do not have the requisite energy storage.
I would prefer that you use the excess energy for new dedicated uses in South Dakota instead of shutting down the wind turbine and spooling it up again later. I don’t mind powering other states when there is a demand, but we are not taking the opportunity to use that excess energy to boost the local economy when it occurs.
I note that in the poll that they apparently did not ask about issues of sustainability. To operate more without subsidies that Jill Taxpayer must pay for, we should be trying to build wind turbines for a lot less, have them work for a lot longer, and be able to recycle or downcycle the decommissioned turbines into something else.
The “Balkanization of Energy” is exactly what is needed. For far to long Touchstone and their kinds have put profits about all else. The infrastructure that these conglomerates have is not adequate for the rural users and frequently goes down with the first storms. A combination of solar and wind for these areas, with the sale of the excess, would make good business sense. San Francisco could clearly see the benefits and were prepared to purchase for their own use and maintenance. Chattanooga, Tennessee did the same with their communication services
“EPB, formerly known as the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, is an American electric power distribution and telecommunications company owned by the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee.[2] In 2010, EPB was the first company in the United States to offer 1 Gbit/s high-speed internet, over 200 times faster than the national average.[3] On October 15, 2015, Chattanooga implemented the world’s first community-wide 10-gig Internet service, available to all homes and businesses in EPB’s service area.[4]
In 1935, an act of the Tennessee Legislature established EPB as an independent board of the City of Chattanooga to provide electric power to the Greater Chattanooga area. Today, EPB remains one of the largest publicly owned electric power distributors in the country.[5] EPB serves more than 170,000 homes and businesses in a 600-square-mile (1,600 km2) area that includes greater Chattanooga and Hamilton County, portions of surrounding Southeastern Tennessee counties and areas of north Georgia.”
If you want better service, faster internets, go public with your own systems, Balkanization indeed.
If you cannot send excess energy elsewhere…and there is no local use for the excess energy….balkanization demands shutting down wind turbines when there is excess energy on the local grid.
One alternative is to dump said excess energy onto your grid and hope for the best. Good luck with trying to reduce prices when your grid is unreliable and has more frequent repairs.
Good luck also winning a poll that tells folks their electricity prices and their taxes are going up because balkanization requires the overbuilding of renewables.
The backup energy from fossil fuels won’t flow as freely with balkanization either. You will end up emitting more carbon than you do now because you will build more natural gas plants.
A small modular reactor, wind and solar, and some energy storage could make a decentralized grid carbon-free and be right-sized for the demand. We are not there yet.
You can actually loop the excess in the grid, just like they do now with excess or in the event of a malfunction or if the water is to warm. No big deal.
What’s a bigger deal is the tax breaks that big oil gets for making to much oil and why there are islands of oil tankers floating in our oceans.
But the question of the day is, what do those pollsters seek in their questions? We should put our attorney general on the case…yeah, that’s the ticket
I guess it is hope for the best then…If you could really loop all of the excess, that would be a form of energy storage, but for some strange reason we are still burning fossil fuels.
I would submit to Cory that what is lacking is a non-partisan certification for polling services, in which things like transparency in who is paying for the polls (and who is paying for who is paying for the polls), dissemination of results, procedures for validating the surveys, accuracy in the polling data, and processes for self-improvement and customer service are examined by an external accreditation body. If they are not accredited, hang up.
I fundamentally oppose anyone making phone calls who keeps secrets. An accreditation service (the “Better Polling Bureau”?) would be nice so we can tell the difference between honest social research and political or corporate manipulation.
But accreditation doesn’t tell us who would put out this poll with this mix of questions.
If the pollster was working for someone interested in wind power, pro or con, I’m keenly interested in what use the hemp question serves in their poll. I’m also keenly interested in why they bother. Wind power isn’t really fought out at the polls. It maybe gets mention in PUC races, but PUC races are decided by party label, not issues, so why bother polling?
And tell me about the sloppy questions: giving respondents multiple reasons at a time to agree or disagree seems to make for unclear results. Are such questions useful? If they aren’t, if this was a genuinely sloppy poll, that suggests to me it was thrown together by anti-science opponents of wind (cancer! noise!) who don’t understand polling science, either, but just got a big chunk of money from their secret Big Oil backers. ;-)
If they were to lose their polling accreditation by not providing information on the funding or the science behind how the poll was produced, then accreditation would be a driver for that kind of transparency. If it isn’t accredited, then it should be introduced as a non-scientific survey.
Cancer, no. Issues with intermittency, subsidies, and sustainability, yes. Solving those will require some investment.
Dr. McTaggart, the problems you cite and the problems the rabid wind opponents cite are very different. I suspect you’d also commission a better designed poll.
Can’t we pretty much assume that if they won’t tell us who’s backing their research, they’re not scientific?
Yes, a poll is not scientific if it is not reproducible.
The whole point of science is that if someone were to use the same sampling techniques and procedures for the poll, one should get the same results (within the error bars at least). But you cannot do that if you don’t know what they did.
“My Dorral resort is the best above all others so that is where my G8 (Russia will be there because Putin, I mean I said so) will be held.” Quoting infamous president of large nation before weasel staff sent out with a retraction.