(Updated to reflect comments from political scientist)
Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Josh Svaty released a poll on Tuesday morning showing him leading the primary campaign against state Sen. Laura Kelly.
The poll of 455 likely Democratic Party voters showed Svaty with 33 percent of the vote compared to Kelly with 28 percent and former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer with 15 percent. Twenty-three percent of the voters were still undecided.
The poll was done by Change Research of San Francisco from June 27 to June 29. The margin of error was 4.4 percent.
In announcing the poll results, the campaign said that the voters surveyed were given several positive statements about all the candidates in the race before asking who they would vote for in the governor’s campaign.
More details about the poll questions and the statements about the Democratic candidates were not immediately available Tuesday.
The Kelly and Brewer campaigns declined comment.
University of Kansas political scientist Patrick Miller questioned the validity of the poll without seeing results where voters weren’t given information about the candidates.
“There is no uninformed vote question,” Miller said. “This poll tells us nothing about where the race stands today. It only tells us about a hypothetical based on information that they didn’t even release.”
Miller wondered if this poll was related to an email he received asking for volunteers to do a two- to three-minute poll for the Svaty campaign.
“I don’t know this pollster. I don’t know what their methodology is. I hope that they actually have professional callers doing the poll,” he said.
The Svaty poll was markedly different from one that Kelly’s campaign released in mid-June that showed her with a commanding lead in the race.
In that poll of 500 likely voters done by the Kelly campaign, the senator received 35 percent to 22 percent for Brewer.
Svaty, who has been campaigning for more than a year, only received 12 percent in that poll.
The Kelly poll was done June 5 through June 7. It had a margin of error of 4.4 percent.
