As the pollster for Florida’s first elected Hispanic governor (Bob Martinez, elected in 1986) and first Hispanic U.S. senator (Mel Martinez, elected in 2004), I have been called upon to try and measure the electoral impact of race through opinion surveys.
In those and other campaigns in which my client faced a black or Hispanic opponent, it was supposed that polling could reveal the hand of racism in shaping votes. My experience leaves me skeptical that polls do a very good job of gauging complex attitudinal constructs like racism and sexism. [cont.]
David Hill (Hill Research Consultants), The Hill