Political Surveys and their Ramifications

I've never been more interested in the Mass. 5th congressional district GOP primary for a special election following the resignation of a guy named "Marty".

Unfortunately, political science studies I'm involved in don't involve some kind of crazy reënactment of the Scopes Trial performed by schoolchildren or an assesment of our feelings toward a movie depicting bears in overalls running out of a burning building.

Rather, it was a relatively tame survey of our political opinions, our political knowledge and our reactions to a twenty minute debate leading up to the GOP primary to determine the Republican nominee in a special election for the congressman for the Massachusetts 5th district after Marty Meehan decided he was going to be the Chancellor at University of Massachusetts-Lowell. So stunningly interesting.


Jim Ogonowski (left) and Thomas Tierney, two of the most strongly accented individuals ever to compete for a Congressional seat. Tierney describes his plan for reducing the deficit as "wicked." Or he would. If he was ever more than ten minutes from taking a nap.

Nothing too difficult in the survey. It appeared to be attempting to determine if we'd been awake during the debate and had us assess who we thought won and where the participants stood on the issues. But, they came through with $20 for my participation and gave me lunch, so I'm happy with them.

To think, there will eventually be a time, if everything goes well, that I won't be a graduate student. And I might be able to not get excited over $20 for participating in a survey. Those times are, as far as I can tell, far away, so I'll happily capitalize on my ability to rank things on a scale of one to seven in the interim.

Oh, and Ogonowski crushed Tierney in the primary (which isn't surprising, as Tierney's positions seemed more similar to those of the current incarnation of the Democratic Party and he admitted that for him, political parties are more about finding the easiest way to get on the ballot rather than ideology), then lost to Niki Tsongas (Paul Tsongas' wife) in the general election. In case you were interested.