New Candidate Sullivan's Poll Questions Raise Questions
Venture capitalist Jesse Sullivan kicking off his campaign in August.
OPINION
Republican gubernatorial candidate Jesse Sullivan appears to be planning to highlight his position in the field as an “outsider,” according to a poll seemingly conducted by his campaign this weekend.
Saturday, I received a text message poll through the popular online survey site “Survey Monkey.” (Yes, if you’ve never heard of it, it’s real and it’s used by business, non-profits, associations, etc.)
There was no direct financial disclosure in the text message or in the poll, and the Sullivan campaign did not return our messages about the poll. But numerous signals gave it away as a pro-Sullivan poll.
The first interesting thing wasn’t necessarily what Republican voters thought about former President Donald Trump, but what their candidates said and did about Trump.
(Pardon the bad image. The site didn’t allow screenshots, so I had to take a picture of my phone with my wife’s phone.)
Sullivan’s campaign also asked GOP voters exactly what the most important issue was to them.
I’ve said many times that on the GOP campaign trail in 2012, Republican voters cared about pro-life and pro-2nd amendment candidates. I’ll venture to bet those two issues fall near the bottom of this list.
Finally, and this may be the most interesting part of this for a campaign that has been criticized for a lack of depth and a candidate without any clear policy ideas, while testing the best messages, there still isn’t much clarity as to what Sullivan believes in.
Candidates test messages, that’s not anything new. I’ve done it and so have most of the top tier candidates you’ve seen over the years. But when I texted this photo to a Republican operative friend of mine who has a lot more experience with polling than I do (I’m a PR guy, not a pollster), his rhetorical question back to me mirrors what many Republican insiders seem to be asking:
“What are they doing?”
Go back and read that list of questions. Whether you’re a Republican primary voter or not, put yourself in those shoes and ask yourself “what statement in this list makes me want to vote for Jesse Sullivan?”
They used the four biographical topics and asked voters if any of those issues would make them more likely to vote for Sullivan. I’m guessing that number didn’t come back supremely positively.
I haven’t heard from anyone that got a telephone poll this weekend, so I don’t know if this was a combined phone/online poll or even if Sullivan has contracted with a legitimate pollster yet. We do know that with $11 million raised in his first week in the race, Sullivan can hire the best GOP pollster in the country.
I’m not out to get Sullivan, in fact, none of the Republicans who haven’t already taken a side in the primary have anything bad to say about him. He’s young, smart, handsome, well spoken, has a beautiful family, and a bright future.
But if Sullivan is going to make a dent in the Republican primary, much less take on a gigantic operation like the Pritzker campaign, it’s time to put a professional face on his campaign.
