[See my earlier post on polling here] Candidates in down-ticket races have  a problem - they need professional help to run their campaigns, but, unless they are independently wealthy, they usually  can't afford the price of a professional political consultant.  For small cities (in my area of California, we have a number of incorporated cities…

As I said in my first post on this subject, there  are times when an underfunded local campaign is better off doing two or more simple polls rather than one large, more complicated and more expensive poll.   Sometimes, this is because knowing how a particular message is doing with the electorate over time is extremely…

If you talk to people about politics these days (and of course, I do), you’ll hear a lot of verbal hand-wringing about the fact that people don’t vote, even when it’s in their best interest to do so. In my view, part of the problem is that voting is too hard, and voters have to…