New poll: Emanuel, Garcia in ‘dead heat’ in mayoral runoff

*This is important for three reasons: first because of the top line news itself. The fact that Chuy Garcia is in a dead heat with incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his powerful political machine is noteworthy and a cause for hope and celebration for many Latinos. Second, because of one sentence in this story, at the end of the second paragraph – the idea that Latinos are underrepresented in the polling data. We’ve been saying this for years about political polling of Latinos. The numbers attributed to Latinos by national pollsters in this and many other polls are consistently wrong because they’re a sub-set of a polling universe and not universes in themselves. And third, an important semantic nuance. If pollsters use misleading methods to represent Latinos, then the problem isn’t “Latino polling.” It’s not that Latinos don’t poll well, it’s that pollsters don’t poll Latinos well. VL

By Jon Seidel, Chicago Sun Times

A Chicago polling firm is calling the city’s runoff campaign between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia a “dead heat.”

New numbers from Ogden & Fry show Garcia, a member of the Cook County board of commissioners, within reach of the one-term Emanuel. And the firm warned that the Hispanic population under-polls, meaning that population is underrepresented in the data.

“They’re likely dead even,” pollster Tom Swiss said Sunday night.

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photos courtesy of Eric Allix RogersAdam Fagen/Flickr]

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