DeMint's Ideology

Sometimes it's pretty obvious people are screwing with your poll.

I was shocked last week when I started up our South Carolina survey and more than 10% of respondents were saying that Jim DeMint was too liberal. I figured the only people who could possibly think that were Republicans and thus about 25% of SC Republicans thought DeMint was too liberal, somewhat of a scary thought.

Breaking down the final numbers this morning though, 51% of respondents who said he was too liberal were Democrats and only 34% were Republicans. I'm guessing those folks were either saying he was too liberal for their own amusement or answering the poll strategically, hoping to put some data point out there that might make DeMint go out even further on a limb and perhaps make himself too extreme even for South Carolina's very conservative electorate.

It's a good reminder that people can game polls if they want to- and this didn't have anything to do with the poll being automated. Overall 12% of respondents said they thought DeMint was too liberal, but given who they were I wouldn't make too much of it.