This post was originally published on this site
You might not expect us to produce reputable polling (you’ve seen our sex survey). And rest assured, we didn’t! But we paid someone to do it for us. Specifically, DHM Research, a nonpartisan public opinion firm that specializes in the Pacific Northwest.
We decided to do this because we were asking questions that other people weren’t—at least not to the same group of 600 statistically significant people around the city. Questions like: Do they really hate Seattle? Is it dying? Are they afraid to leave the house for fear of running into the public safety crisis in a dark alley? What issue drives them to dig their ballot out of their junk mail? Is Bruce Harrell Superman?
We didn’t ask them like that—that would lead to very biased study results. And thankfully, the data scientists DHM knew how to ask these questions scientifically.
Those geniuses pulled together a 46 question survey for the masses (you can read more about the methodology in the fine print below, if you’re that kind of nerd). And they came back with pages and pages of insights into your brains.
If you ever frequent our website, you may have seen our polling about the election—or in the Seattle Times! (We love it when they have to cite us.) We learned a lot about the stakes of the election before the ballots were counted: that progressives were kicking ass; that the city wanted to elect Katie Wilson, but not all of them were planning to show up to the polls; and the people voting for Bruce Harrell didn’t really like the city he’d been leading for four years. But that’s not the end of Stranger Polling. We actually asked a stressful number of questions, and discovered what crosstabs are.
Through the end of the year, we’ll be doling out this information like children at a petting zoo. Why did people vote like that? What do they expect from their newly elected (or reelected) officials? Were they voting for candidates they loved? Or against losers they were tired of? How does income, age, and politics change those answers?
We’ll have all of that and more. Keep reading.