A St. Norbert College poll and a Wall Street Journal poll disagreed on the margin of of Gov. Jim Doyle's lead over Republican U.S Rep. Mark Green. The St. Norbert poll showed Doyle with a strong lead of 51 percent to 38 percent. Meanwhile, Doyle holds less than a two percent lead in the Wall Street Journal poll—well within the poll's three-point margin of error.
The Wall Street Journal poll, conducted by prominent national pollster John Zogby, is an Internet poll—a relatively experimental polling practice. UW-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin said Internet polling has not proven to be a reliable alternative to the probability theory behind telephone polling.
Zogby's poll found likely voters via advertisements on various websites. Internet surfers were encouraged to ""click here,"" and were then transferred to a link asking them to answer a weekly poll. Zogby chose to publish participants' poll answers based on their demographic information.
Franklin said because those polled online are often highly interested in politics, Zogby's poll has consistently overstated the closeness of Wisconsin's governor race over the past year.
""Those participating in Zogby's poll knew who Green was a year ago,"" Franklin said, whereas less informed voters might just now be grappling with this election's issues and candidates.
To explain the 13-point gap between Green and Doyle in the St. Norbert phone poll, Franklin referred to the poll's relatively small sampling of likely voters—only 400 people. College students and community members conducted the poll, which also skewed the poll's results, Franklin said.
In defense of her poll, assistant professor of political science at St. Norbert College Wendy Scattergood pointed to St. Norbert's five percent margin of error. ""With the poll's error margin, our numbers certainly are not out of the league from what we have been seeing,"" Scattergood said.
Scattergood said there is a strict monitoring system that ensures pollsters are unbiased in their phone conversations with likely voters. ""Our pollsters go through hours of training,"" she said.
Green appeared confident despite St. Norbert's polling results.
""Every credible independent poll conducted in the last month shows the governor's race dead even, with momentum clearly on Mark Green's side. The results of the St. Norbert poll released today simply are not accurate,"" Green said in a statement.
As of Thursday, pollster.com, a combination of several polls' results—including St. Norbert's and Zogby's—showed Doyle ahead of Green by 5 percent.
