#CA03 Update: On The Heels of a Warning About Insider Activity, Kiley Releases an Internal Poll

This spin from Kiley’s campaign is indeed over the top.

Kevin Kiley holds commanding lead over Scott Jones in CA 3

ROCKLIN, CA – – With voting underway and just over three weeks before Election Day, Republican Kevin Kiley holds a “commanding lead” over GOP rival Scott Jones, in a new poll conducted by Public Opinion Strategies of Alexandria, VA.

Kiley’s general consultant Dave Gilliard said that, despite the large lead, the Kiley campaign is taking nothing for granted, “We have hundreds of volunteers in the precincts and on the phones and have a full broadcast, cable, digital and direct mail campaign underway that will continue until the polls close.”

Allow your intrepid blogger to provide some balance:

First of all, the margin for error is 5.24%. This is high. Typically, you want polls in the 4.5% range. 5.25% is a full standard deviation higher.

Secondly, this is a survey of 350. Your intrepid blogger prefers N=450 to 500 on a small race poll. 700 is better, but is also expensive (Can be in excess of $20,000 to execute) The high Margin for error is almost entirely due to the fact that Gilliard/Kiley did not survey enough voters.

Third, the cross-tabs of the poll are not posted, only the topline results. This suggests that Team Kiley saw stuff in the specific sorts that indicate areas of concern. Otherwise, they’d have published the complete results.

A 28-13 Lead is nice. I’d rather be Kevin Kiley than Scott Jones. However, this is far from a knockout. If anything, an already enraged establishment may see this and flood the zone with cash. The hubris of these people is far too big for your intrepid blogger to believe anything else. If the massive independent expenditure and the anticipated flood of endorsements do not materialize in the next 72 hours, then the establishment is admitting this poll is gospel. The pain of the crushed egos may be too much to bear for some of these people.

If you support Kevin Kiley – you need to bust your a– to put Jones away. This race is not over.