Viability Poll for Irving Mayor

Campaign season, here we come

Well well well, what do we have here:

The link takes one to a QuestionPro survey from “Data to Victory Strategies”:

This outfit is run by Mike Stevens, a conservative political consultant out of Lubbock, who apparently has done work for John Bloch’s campaign

A poll like this costs around $8,000 or so.

Click the last option if you want your opinion to be ignored!

The deadline to file for the race is Friday, February 13, by 5:00 p.m.

There are other candidates, but these four are serious enough to be included in the poll.

One is gung-ho:

Back to the survey:

The next questions give options for all four candidates, in reverse alphabetically order. Wouldn’t want any respondents to skip giving an opinion about the candidate that’s actually paying for the poll!

The next questions are:

• “Has the right experience to be mayor”

• “Can manage city finances responsibly”

• “Is honest and trustworthy” (drawing a contrast with Herb Gears are we)

• “Represents my values” (the closest it gets to touching the Library issue)

• “Is out of touch with everyday people” (uh oh)

A pretty good list.

Do we need a strong manager as mayor? Don’t we have a city manager to manage the city?

The poll asks for a preference again at the end, “after thinking about the qualities and issues that matter most to you.”

It asks for a second-choice candidate.

It asks if there is a candidate “you just cant [sic] support.”

It asks if the respondent is liberal, moderate, or conservative. Thus allowing for fun crosstabs.

Interestingly, it also asks for “your current opinion” on the Mayor of Irving and also City Council: Excellent, Above Average, Average, Needs Improvement.

Last but not least:

Unfortunately, the way our political system works is the most interesting and telling polls are those polls that the public never gets to see the results of — the campaign polls paid for by people who actually want the truth (unlike public-facing media polls).

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Disclosure: staff of the Irving Herald are active in Irving politics and some are affiliated with the Families for Irving Political Action Committee, which supports local candidates. Commentary may reflect those affiliations.