The local scene
FIRST: Vote!
Washington voters, if you’ve already voted, check with vote.wa.gov to confirm that your ballot has been received and accepted. Then encourage every like-minded person you know (or even just brush past) to also vote. Turnout (or ballot turn-in in our state) is the key to this election. If you still have contact with anyone in the swing states of like mind call and encourage them, too!
A Local Poll
Especially since the general election of 2016, if you haven’t learned to be skeptical of the results of political polling—as well as statements about the attitudes of a population about any topic based on polling—then you probably haven’t paid enough attention.
Last Sunday the front page, above-the-fold article in the Spokesman was titled “How Local Leaders Plan to Address Stinging Poll Results” and sub-titled “Citizen’s reveal distrust in government’s ability to respond to issues.” The article offered four pie charts, two of which I’ve copied below:
To be fair, the online version of this article by Emry Dinman and Nick Gibson carried a different and considerably less inflammatory title, “Faced with the same data on Spokane’s quality of life, elected leaders read into the poor findings differently.” (Titles in the paper paper are up to the editor of that portion of the publication, not the author[s].) Without offering much more detail about how the poll was conducted, the article droned on for 2300 words of quotes from local elected officials buttonholed to explain the survey results.
As a physician and scientist used to judging the value and veracity of medical studies I wanted to know much more about the specifics of the data used to assail those folks whose responses appeared in the article.
Polls
In the media much has been breathlessly spoken and written about polling results. Of course, there is a broad span in the purpose and quality of polling. On one extreme are the obvious “push polls.” Arguably, these aren’t polls at all, but rather a form of political marketing. Such polls appear in your email inbox with questions like “How much do you hate Kamala Harris on a scale of 1 to 10?” followed by a request for a donation to a Republican political action committee. Of course, anyone who imagines that the goal of such polling is actual data gathering and analysis should be an easy mark for all kinds of scams.
On the other extreme among political polls are those that actually attempt to predict the result of an election or the attitudes of a particular population on some other issue or issues. Such legitimate polling efforts offer up front a myriad of details concerning the methods used to select and contact participants, the number actually contacted, the percent of those contacted who actually participated, as well as data like the ages, gender, and political registrations of the folks in the two groups. Finally, there ought to be an analysis to show that the participants are demographically as similar as possible to the folks in the population whose voting or attitudes one is trying to assess. Also valuable might be the political leaning of the organization commissioning and paying for the poll as well as the same information about the group actually doing the polling.
The Greater Spokane Inc. Poll, “The Pulse” Quoted in the Spokesman
Greater Spokane Inc. (GSI) “is the Spokane region’s business development organization and nonprofit 501(C)6 with a 501(C)3 Foundation.” Its offices are at 800 W. Riverside, Suite 200, in the heart of downtown. It maintains an extensive and somewhat convoluted website. The poll numbers so confidently cited in the Spokesman come from an extensive survey entitled “The Pulse, fueled by GSI.” The forty-six page Pulse document, confusingly dated “October 2025,” can be viewed here (or better downloaded in order to read it). Here’s the website’s introduction to The Pulse poll:
Poll Reveals Critical Issues to Guide Community-Supported Solutions
At Greater Spokane Inc. (GSI), we’re committed to helping our region grow and thrive by making sure our community’s voice is heard loud and clear. That’s why we’re excited to announce the release of The Pulse, a groundbreaking series of comprehensive, scientific polls that dive into the critical issues affecting Spokane residents and businesses.
This is the first poll of its kind in the region, offering Spokane decision-makers a reliable snapshot of voter sentiment on key policy issues such as public safety, homelessness, housing, economic growth, and workforce development.
Note the emphasis on the words “scientific” and “comprehensive.” The Pulse document itself is forty-six pages of tables laying out ratings and short answers given by 600 registered voters to at least 55 questions. Of the 600 respondents 47% indicated that currently they do not live in the city of Spokane (page 27). Nowhere does the website or the document explain how the respondents were selected, how they were contacted, how many agreed to the very considerable effort to fill out a 55 question survey (and how many refused). There is no attempt to offer data on how this is (or is not) a valid, representative, “scientific” sample of the people of the voting population The Pulse purports to survey.
Leaving aside potential selection bias in choosing those to try contacting, does anyone think that willingness to complete a 55 question survey might self-select a certain sort of respondent?
Perhaps most tellingly, on the GSI website the way one eventually gets to The Pulse is through a “Dig into the Data” button link on the webpage 2024 Spokane Regional Elections Center.
We can laud the effort that went into gathering and tabulating all this data, but until a lot more detail on how the data was collected is publicly available any thinking person ought to view The Pulse poll—and the pointed questions of elective officials that it generated—with great skepticism. One might be tempted to conclude that the purpose of the poll is to plant seeds of criticism of the current city administration in preparation for next year’s municipal elections. The poll likely represents the views of these 316 City of Spokane voters who took the time to participate, but the chance that these 316 are a representative sample of the City of Spokane voting public seems remote.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry