CEO of Preston-Osborne talks KY polling and the Senate race

Lexington-based public relations firm Preston-Osborne will mark its twentieth year of experience in the polling business this year. In the last year, the firm has conducted statewide polls for both the 2007 gubernatorial race and the forthcoming Democratic Presidential primary while maintaining a full load of public relations work.

The firm's CEO and owner, Phil Osborne, recently spoke with PolitickerKY.com about the firm, polling in Kentucky, and the state's contentious Democratic Senate primary race.

Preston-Osborne is well-known for its links to the office of Governor Steve Beshear (D-Lexington). Founder Thomas Preston now works as Beshear's senior advisor. Current CEO and owner Phil Osborne was the Governor's top pick for communications director. He ultimately refused the job amid questions of conflicts of interest between his firm's work and employment with the Governor, despite being cleared for the position by a state ethics commission.

Even with these connections, Osborne says the firm isn't expecting a huge boost in political clients this election year.

"We don't expect any significant blip in business during the campaigns," said Osborne. "We will probably handle one or two legislative races."

The firm's polling operation is done entirely in-house. Preston-Osborne maintains a 20-line call center at its Lexington facility.

While they have conducted several well-publicized polls in the past year, Osborne says the firm' s business is actually comprised of 65 percent public relations work and 35 percent research and polling-based. A large majority of the research work is done for non-political clients, such as utility companies and hospitals.

The Presidential primary poll released by the firm on April 8, Osborne notes, was commissioned by the firm itself, and conducted during some "downtime" in its call center.Osborne says part of the reason behind the lack of political clients is that many of Kentucky's politicians don't think commissioning polls is an option for them.

"A lot of campaigns think they can't afford polling...Its sort of this mysterious thing they think is outrageously expensive," said Osborne. "We can whittle the sample size down and get it to be fairly inexpensive."

Osborne also claims that paying for polling can help candidates as campaigns wind on.

"If you do polling properly, you can spend the rest of your money more efficiently," said Osborne. "You can test your message and test your advertising in advance."

Some of the more visible political polls discussed in the Kentucky media are conducted by the New Jersey-based firm SurveyUSA. That operation uses pre-recorded voices and push-button response systems to collect its data.

Osborne says that there are some differences between the polling conducted by SurveyUSA and his firm.

"When we do [a poll] we like to do frequent voters, which are people that have voted in three of the last five primaries and three of the last five generals," said Osborne. "These are the people that follow the races a little more closely."

In recent Kentucky polls, SurveyUSA has used a mixture of sample populations, including testing registered and "likely" voters.

In the most recent primary poll conducted by the firm, "likely voters" are measured. A spokesman from SurveyUSA indicated such a population is gathered by filtering out unlikely voters based on their eligibility and self-placement on a ten-point scale, measuring interest in each particular election.

Osborne also said Preston-Osbourne's methodology has some drawbacks.

"One criticism is you rule out a lot of younger voters who haven't voted before," said Osborne.

Osborne predicted Presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois) would "energize young people," but the impact that would have on poll accuracy would not be major.

"Even if [young voters] doubled their turnout, it would still be less than 20 percent," said Osborne.

Looking at the Senate Race

Osborne said his firm had not done any polling on the tumultuous Democratic Senate primary in the Commonwealth, but he said history may be weighing in favor of the race's current frontrunner, Bruce Lunsford.

Lunsford is 25 points ahead of his nearest opponent, Greg Fischer, according to the latest publicly available poll, conducted by SurveyUSA.

"[Fischer] would be hardpressed to make that up...He started in such a hole with his name recognition," said Osborne. "If the SurveyUSA poll is accurate, I am not sure that can happen."

Osborne pointed to Wallace Wilkinson, the surprise winner of the 1987 Democratic Gubernatorial primary, as an example of how candidates trailing late can move to the front of the field. In that race, Osborne said Wilkinson - who also won the general election - seized on a "wedge issue" late in the primary by touting a state lottery.

"The lottery propelled him to the front of the field," said Osborne.

Wilkinson had been as far back as fourth in the polls.

Osborne said that in this year's Senate race there was not a similar wedge issue in play for Fischer.

Fischer's strategy instead has been to hammer Lunsford's history with attack ads, for which Fischer has been on the end of a good deal of criticism. Osborne also doubted this strategy would benefit either Lunsford or Fischer.

"Negative campaigning accomplishes two things," said Osborne. "It drives turnout down and it drives approval ratings down for both candidates."