judgesonmerit.org

Not every poll really means what it claims to mean. For example, a new poll released by the American Justice Partnership (AJP) claims that voters “overwhelmingly support the direct election of state Supreme Court justices over a nominating commission/appointment process.” However, looking at the portions of the poll that AJP has chosen to release, it is clear that the poll is heavily weighted to come out with specific results. As Bert Brandenburg of Justice At Stake explained in a post on Gavel Grab:

A scan of the limited excerpts AJP was willing to release show the arguments against merit outnumbering arguments for—a polling no-no. And rather than fairly testing the other side, the poll waters down the traditional arguments for merit selection into bland, less appealing language. It’s also unclear why they polled only 800 voters, compared to the Gallup-standard 1,000 for a national survey.

Questions have been raised in the past by PoliPundit.com and Media Matters for America about the methodologies used by Ayres, McHenry & Associates, Inc., the firm behind the AJP poll. A PoliPundit.com review of various polling firms noted that Ayres McHenry goes against the American Association of Public Opinion Research’s written Code of Professional Ethics and Practice by not providing information about the pollster’s weighting or breakdown of samples.

We know that reasonable people disagree about how best to pick judges, but this poll should not be relied on as an accurate picture of the state of American public opinion.