Elway poll shows Grand Old confusion

The most recent Elway Poll, done June 18-22, followed up on its gubernatorial preference question by asking would-be voters what they thought "GOP" meant. Three fourths of the 405 registered voters knew that Grand Old Party stood for the Republican Party, but the other twenty-five percent of them got it wrong.

Fifteen percent of the respondents did not know what the acronym stood for while seven percent believed it represented the Democratic Party, and three percent thought something else entirely. Even more significant is that the sample of people who answered incorrectly fell relatively evenly across the political spectrum.

Twenty-seven percent of independents, twenty-six percent of Democrats, and even eighteen percent of Republicans were unable to say that GOP means Republican.

This matters, of course, because of the "top two" primary ballot where candidates were ordered to state which party they preferred to belong to, instead of the traditional way of filing as a Democrat or a Republican or with a third party. Many prominent Republicans, including gubernatorial challenger Dino Rossi, will appear on the ballot preferring the "GOP Party".

If the election were today, the Elway Poll shows that a quarter of all voters would not even know what that means.