Press release:
Pro-Trump Reform Party candidate Larry Piegza states that he is gaining a larger and larger portion of the pro-Trump voters.
"Our methodology for tracking this is simple," Piegza said, "we did a phone survey of every single Republican, Conservative and Independent that voted in a mid-term election. They explained that I am pro-Trump, pro-Second Amendment and pro-life. We then asked the voter if they would consider voting for me, the third-party candidate over Chris Collins.
"The results were staggering. Of the people expecting to vote for a Republican this year, 73 percent stated that they would prefer to vote for me. This was validated by a follow-up poll that I showed to Howard Owens at The Batavian.
Mathematician Richard Ford reviewed the statistics and said, “The size of this sample is large enough to make the survey is significant, and close to the sentiments of the entire population from which the sample was taken. It indicates that when a Conservative voter learns that they have an acceptable alternative to Collins, the majority of them will choose the alternative."
While the 73 percent is not consistent with outside polling, the timing of published polls show that Piegza's popularity is definitely growing. Many forecasters didn't list Piegza's vote total in August due to the fact that it wasn't statistically significant.
FiveThirtyEight.com had Piegza's numbers between 2-3 percent in September. In October, the McMurray campaign notes that 6 percent of the voters indicate they plan to vote for Piegza.
“You’ve got to consider that McMurray’s polling data might have been conducted earlier, they might be polling non-voters’ sentiment, and they obviously included the Democrats in the data,” Ford said. “Taking all of these factors into account, McMurray’s data validates the fact that pro-Trump voters are leaving Collins when they learn of Piegza.”
Another difference in predicted votes can be attributed to the fact that national websites include factors like campaign staff and available funds to inform their calculations.
"But this race is like no other," Ford said, "Collins wasn’t running six weeks ago. Piegza now has five times the available funds ($230,000) he did in his June filing. If Piegza and McMurray debate without Collins, Collins could easily find that he's the third-place candidate."
Whatever the actual polling results show, Piegza likes his chances.
"The people who are voting for me are never going to vote for Collins because many of them believe he will be serving jail time," Piegza said. "I already have enough support to cause Chris Collins to lose.
"Each day more and more people are thanking me that they can cast an ethical vote. Few people in the district want a Democrat to win, so if Chris Collins actually cared for our district, he should be telling people to vote for me.”
