I must commend Jeff Jellison, publisher of the Hamilton County Reporter newspaper.  He is willing to be creative and try news things.  The Reporter is also my news-gathering partner.

His latest experiment is asking his readers to respond to a 2019 local primary election poll.  In a special edition of his publication posted online the day before the election, Jellison revealed the results of that poll.  Of his 10,000 subscribers, Jellison says 7,900 of his readers responded to an online poll about how they plan to cast their votes election day.

Although I am not an expert in polling, I did study this concept as a political science major in college.  I must note that we need to consider many flaws in this poll.  It is very unscientific.

First, of those 7,900 people responding, we don’t know how many are registered voters or likely voters.  We also do not know where the respondents live.  For example, for those responding to the Fishers election, there is no way of knowing how many of those taking the poll actually live in Fishers.

Scientific polls are geeky exercises in statistical analysis, or, to put it another way, just really complicated math problems.  You must quantify the margin of error for the poll to be scientific.  There is no way to measure the margin of error in the Reporter’s poll.

So, just be aware that this poll is in no way scientific, but it is all we have.  It is possible at least one candidate has done some internal scientific polling, but those poll results are for the campaign, not for public consumption.

News organizations sometimes pay for scientific polling, but that is very expensive.  It is rare anymore for a news organization in Indiana to commission a poll that meets the industry standards.

So, with all those caveats, I am passing along Jeff Jellison’s reader survey.  The results for the Fishers election are shown below.

One other message to all Fishers voters.  The HSE Schools, as part of a movement by all Hamilton County School Systems, has decided not to host any polling sites this election cycle due to security concerns.  If you have been voting at a Hamilton Southeastern school location, you should have received a little yellow card from Hamilton County informing you of the new polling place.  If you want to check your polling location just to be sure, and to verify you are a registered voter, use this link and access “Check Voting Status – Check Your Registration Record.”

You can view the entire special pre-election edition of the Hamilton County Reporter at this link.