Pollster Stands By Rejected Survey Showing Struggling Democrat In Single Digits That He Released Anyway

A Michigan pollster is standing by his decision to release a survey showing a Democratic Senate candidate at 6% — despite a news outlet having rejected it over methodology concerns.

Steve Mitchell, a longtime researcher based in the key battleground state, conducted a survey that he claimed to be done on behalf of local news outlet Michigan Information & Research Service (MIRS), and released it independently through his firm Mitchell Research & Communications on Tuesday. However, a MIRS editor told the 🏢Daily Caller News Foundation that the poll — which shows former Democratic primary frontrunner State Sen. Mallory McMorrow in single digits — was not approved or commissioned by his outlet.

Mitchell’s poll notably showed McMorrow with 0% of support among black voters. It also showed her with 0% of support among voters aged 18-44, a demographic the 39-year-old candidate belongs to.

MIRS news editor Kyle Melinn, who made the decision to not run the survey, told the DCNF that his outlet did not ask for the poll.

“MIRS didn’t pay for it. MIRS didn’t run it. How is it a MIRS poll?” Melinn said.

Mitchell had claimed in an interview with Politico published Wednesday that McMorrow’s team pressured MIRS into killing the poll, showing her in a distant third.

“The poll, in the eyes of the McMorrow campaign, understated their support,” Mitchell told the outlet. “And they put intense pressure on MIRS, and therefore MIRS decided that they weren’t going to run the survey. That’s their decision, and I support their decision.”

Melinn told the DCNF that his outlet had a long informal relationship with Mitchell and had run multiple polls from his firm in the past. Melinn added that he had sent Mitchell’s Democratic Senate primary poll to each of the three candidates’ campaigns ahead of its scheduled Tuesday release.

He noted that McMorrow’s campaign called him and “raised some concerns about how the poll was conducted,” specifically the fact that it had an open link that effectively allowed anyone, not just members of its selected sample, to take it.

Melinn told the DCNF that he called Mitchell who confirmed to him the poll was conducted via an “open link.” After doing his “due diligence” and conferring with other pollsters and his publisher the editor concluded he was not comfortable with running the poll.

However, Mitchell does not share these methodology concerns telling the DCNF that conducting text message surveys via open links is “standard practice” in the polling industry. He stressed that he has conducted many polls this way in the past that MIRS had run without issue.

While he acknowledged that such links can be susceptible to being hijacked by bad actors, Mitchell told the DCNF that there are “safeguards good pollsters” like himself use “to prevent that from happening.” He specified these safeguards included sending the poll to multiple links as well as the security measures built in to SurveyMonkey.

An X account which claims to be the official team account of McMorrow’s left-wing primary rival, Abdul El-Sayed, posted the results of Mitchell’s poll Wednesday. The survey shows El-Sayed in the lead with 42% of support compared to 6% for McMorrow and 33% for Democratic Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens.

In its post, Abdul El-Sayed HQ, called the Senate survey a “MIRS poll” despite the outlet declining to run it. As of Thursday afternoon, El-Sayed himself followed the Abdul El-Sayed HQ account.

El-Sayed’s campaign did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

McMorrow’s team is standing by their claim that they opposed the poll because it was conducted via an open link, not because it showed her in dead last.

“The outlet that sponsored this poll declined to publish it because it didn’t meet their standards,” a spokesperson for McMorrow’s Senate campaign told the DCNF in a statement. “It was conducted through an open SurveyMonkey link sent over text, meaning anyone who received this poll could vote multiple times or send the link to friends and supporters to impact the results.”

“This is fundamental polling malpractice. We urge either of our opponents, or any reputable pollster, to stand by this shoddy methodology,” the spokesperson added.

McMorrow was previously considered the frontrunner to win the Democratic Senate nomination. An Emerson College poll released April 16 showed her tied for first place with El-Sayed, with both registering 24% of support. The same firm’s poll from January showed McMorrow in the sole lead spot with 22% of support, with 38% of voters undecided.

Mitchell’s firm conducted the poll from June 11 to June 13 completely via text message by directing the randomly-selected sample of 409 likely Democratic primary voters to a SurveyMonkey poll. The survey had a margin of error of 4.85 percentage points. The poll’s methodology statement notably includes the line, “Mitchell Research & Communications was ranked 13th most accurate pollster in the 2024 election cycle by ActiVote, a neutral third-party organization.”

Mitchell founded his polling firm more than 40 years ago after working on President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign, according to the pollster’s website. He served as a pollster for multiple Michigan-based outlets from 1996 to 2014.

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