Petrelis Files

BAR: HRC Refuses to Name ENDA Pollster

(Che Tabisola, HRC research center director.)

The Human Rights Campaign, a group that could use a lot more transparency over its varied operations, won't tell the Bay Area Reporter the name of the pollster who surveyed members of the LGBT community on ENDA.

From the BAR's editorial today, written by Cynthia Laird:

Earlier Tuesday, HRC trumpeted a poll it commissioned that showed 70 percent of the 500 self-identified LGBT folks surveyed were okay with the non-trans ENDA. We immediately asked who these people were – HRC members or subscribers of the Advocate? (The magazine was first out of the box to post the story about the survey, leaving some to wonder if the two were joined at the hip on this one.) Minutes later, we received a call from spokesman Brad Luna, who assured us that the 500 folks were "randomly" selected "from across the country" and were "not HRC members and not Advocate readers."

He declined to name the polling company that conducted the survey, which he said was done by telephone. [Emphasis added.]

Like the BAR, I too had questions about the basics of HRC poll, like the name of the firm that did it, methodology behind the results, list of all questions asked, if numbers were broken down by race, economic status, and if respondents identified as either L or G or B or T. But I couldn't locate answers on the HRC site, and if this basic info is posted there, or somewhere else on the web, please share with the me the URL.

Bully for the BAR in being somewhat skeptical of the HRC polling on ENDA, but I wish the paper in addition to reporting HRC refusal to tell us the pollster's name, the BAR told us why HRC is keeping their pollster, and more details on the poll, in the closet.

I did find a blog entry at the HRC site in which they were promising to help the community understand and interpret all the 2008 election polls and stats coming out these days, and their importance for LGBT voters.

The head of HRC's research center, Che Tabisola, according the Back Story blog entry titled "Ensuring accurate interpretation from polling will be a top priority for HRC's research center," is going to "help us make sense of the plethora of polls and the way they should be properly viewed."

Okay, HCR and Che Tabisola, please start with giving us more information on the ENDA poll. Posting the name of the pollster, more data, would go a long way in opening up HRC and its decision-making process, but HRC cannot stop there.

The nation's largest gay political advocacy organization has a further duty to also tell us about all of their full range of polling conducted this year. It's not enough for HRC to only tell us the data that backs of their leadership's views.

Who conducted HRC's poll on ENDA and why can't we know the name of the pollster from HRC? I've never heard of a special-interest group generating so much spilled ink over poll results, and no one knows who the pollster was. Surely there is nothing wrong with pollsters working with a gay group . . . is there?