P.J. Wenzel Joins Wenzel Strategies to Lead Business Development

JUNE 18, 2013 – P.J. Wenzel, former president of Front Porch Strategies who has a long resume of experience at the highest levels of national politics, is today joining Wenzel Strategies to lead an aggressive national business development program for the polling firm.

Wenzel Strategies is a public opinion research and communications consulting company based in Columbus, Ohio which specializes in marrying the fields of research and communications to produce top-quality results for political, government, non-profit, business and lobbying clients.

            “PJ brings incredible experience, energy and a love of politics and customer service. He will prove an invaluable asset for our firm,” said company President Fritz Wenzel, who is also PJ’s father. “It’s a dream for almost every father to work alongside his son, and this is an extraordinary opportunity because PJ is so good at what he does and is painstakingly honest and ethical in all he does.”

            Most recently, PJ served as the President Front Porch Strategies, an international voter contact firm based in Columbus Ohio. PJ has been working on political and issue campaigns since 1994 and has done work in over 45 US states and internationally on three continents. 

            In the 2007-2008 presidential primary election cycle PJ served as the Midwest Political Director for Mitt Romney’s Presidential Campaign where he managed and oversaw political operations in 13 states.

            After the 2008 Presidential primaries, PJ served as Campaign Manager for State Senator Kirk Schuring’s general election bid for Congress (OH-16). 

            PJ has worked as a Field Director for the Ohio Republican Party where he held 3 field positions during his tenure and eventually became the State Coalitions Director. While at the ORP he worked on the successful Presidential Campaign of President George W. Bush, and in the summer of 2005 he implemented a successful five-county grassroots campaign in the special election of Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (OH-2).

            Later in 2005, he served as Political Director on the Ohio First campaign, which defeated four dangerous statewide ballot initiatives by enormous margins.

            Following the successful Ohio First campaign, PJ served as Political Director for Ken Blackwell’s gubernatorial campaign, and in 2007 he took a position as Ohio Auditor Mary Taylor’s State Liaison Director.

            PJ has an Honors B.A. from The University of Toledo and a Masters in Political Management from The George Washington University. 

            PJ has also worked in the Washington D.C. office of former U.S. Congressman (now U.S. Senator) Rob Portman, and in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House during the administration of President George W. Bush. PJ resides in Columbus, Ohio with his wife Katie and three wonderful children. They are active members of Dublin Baptist Church, where PJ is an ordained Deacon and teaches Sunday School as well as courses on theology and apologetics.

PJ can be reached at 202-805-4320 or pj@wenzelstrategies.com

WS Poll: McConnell Leads Possible Challengers in Kentucky

JUNE 3, 2013 – Republican Senator Mitch McConnell would defeat all of three possible challengers in a head-to-head match-up, a new Wenzel Strategies survey of likely voters in Kentucky shows. He leads Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky Secretary of State, by a 47% to 40% margin. He leads Democrat Heather French Henry, a former Miss America, by a 46% to 40% margin, and leads lawyer Tom FitzGerald by a 47% to 40% margin.

McConnell is not as popular among Kentucky voters as is Democrat Governor Steve Beshear or fellow Republican Senator Rand Paul, but 54% do have a favorable opinion of the longtime officeholder.

The Wenzel Strategies poll is different than other recent surveys of Kentucky in that its sample includes only likely voters, and the sample is balanced to properly represent the voting sample statewide, including such factors as partisan affiliation, age, gender, and, importantly, regional distribution of voters around Kentucky. It is hard to overstate the importance of a sample of likely voters versus registered voters in testing a political race like this, particularly this far from the election when tried and tested voters can be counted on to turn out. Further, Wenzel Strategies is highly experienced in testing the opinions of Kentucky voters, having polled the U.S. Senate race there extensively in 2010, and was widely recognized as the most accurate pollster in Kentucky politics after the 2012 vote.

Here is the topline summary report:

Kentucky Senate Poll Topline Summary Report 6-3-2013

WS Kentucky Senate Survey Polling Memo 6-3-2013

Citizens United/Wenzel Strategies Poll: Cuccinelli Leads McAuliffe in Virginia

May 16, 2013-A new Wenzel Strategies survey commissioned by Citizens United shows that Republican Ken Cuccinelli leads Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the race for governor of Virginia. Cuccinelli leads by a 44% to 36% margin. The poll includes 800 likely voters, which is an important distinction from a Quinnipiac poll of registered voters, also released today, which showed McAuliffe with a small lead. Here is the full release from Citizens United, including the topline summary report and the polling memorandum written by Wenzel Strategies President Fritz Wenzel.

Wenzel Strategies Poll Shows Public Strongly Backs Rand Paul on Drones

BREAKING NEWS-Today’s Rand Paul filibuster on the floor of the Senate in Washington D.C. against the nomination of John Brennan for CIA Director is based on Brennan’s support for the use of drones over U.S. soil. Not that a man of principle like Senator Paul cares, but recent Wenzel Strategies polling on a very similar subject shows that the vast majority of Americans agrees with him on the subject.

The survey, conducted January 9-12, 2013, shows that 62% of adults nationwide oppose the use of drones by law enforcement agencies in America. It is a slightly different question than what Senator Paul is fighting against on the Senate floor today, in that he is opposing federal use of drones, while the Wenzel Strategies question asked about local or state governments using the drones. But the core of the question is the same: “Are we as a nation so afraid of terrorists or criminals or our own neighbors that we would prefer our own government to spy on us – or worse, attack us from the skies above?”

Here is the question and topline findings:

18.  Do you agree that local or state law enforcement agencies should possess and use drones equipped with live-broadcast cameras flying overhead as part of their policing efforts, or do you believe that the use of drones in domestic policing efforts represent a violation of citizens’ rights to privacy?

			Percent
Valid	SHOULD USE DRONES		20.3%
	DRONES VIOLATE PRIVACY		61.6%
	NOT SURE		18.1%
	Total		100.0%

Citizens United/Wenzel Poll: Steve King Holds Big Lead in GOP Senate Race

FEBRUARY 5, 2013- This latest dispatch from the POLITICO’s Morning Score features the latest Wenzel Strategies survey of likely Republican Primary Election voters in Iowa. The survey shows that Congressman Steve King, who represents a district in western Iowa, leads a field of 8 possible candidates, winning 34 percent support. Congressman Tom Latham is a distant second, winning 19 percent, and Lt. Governor Kim Reynolds comes in third place at 10 percent. King is helped by a very strong favorability rating, as 67 percent said they hold a favorable opinion of him.

Here is the blurb from the POLITICO:

 IOWA EXCLUSIVE-KING HOLDS BIG LEAD IN GOP SENATE PRIMARY: Steve King is the heavy, early favorite for the Republican nomination if he runs. Citizens United Political Victory Fund commissioned a poll from Wenzel Strategies over the weekend showing the congressman from northwest Iowa at the top of an eight-candidate field and ahead of his next-closest challenger, Rep. Tom Latham, by 8 points (43-35) in a head-to-head matchup among likely GOP primary voters. King is viewed favorably by 67 percent of this sample, and unfavorably by only 16 percent. Latham has a similar 65/14 fav/unfav. Behind King and Latham in the wide-open ballot test, Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds pulled third with 10 percent and Family Leader President Bob Vander Plaats got fourth with 9 percent. Rounding out the bottom of the pack were Brad Zaun, Bill Northey, Matt Schultz and David Vaudt. Citizen United’s affiliated PAC has supported King, Latham and Zaun in past cycles. Fritz Wenzel’s memo: http://goo.gl/yVRC5 8-pages of toplines: http://goo.gl/3Atzb

New WND/Wenzel Poll Shows Americans Getting Used to Traffic Cameras But Oppose Domestic Drones

JANUARY 18, 2013– The latest survey of Americans nationwide shows that they are getting more used to the idea of cameras to spy on their driving habits, but they are not pleased with the idea of law enforcement agencies using aerial drones with live television cameras to watch over them. Here is the link to the story appearing at WorldNetDaily.com.  It is also pasted here below:

WND EXCLUSIVE

Americans endorse spycams, getting used to drones

Survey shows ‘shocking willingness’ to forfeit freedoms

by Bob Unruh

Editor’s note: This is another in a series of “WND/WENZEL POLLS” conducted exclusively for WND by the public-opinion research and media consulting company Wenzel Strategies.

A new poll has uncovered a “shocking willingness” on the part of Americans to give up their privacy and freedoms for the sake of “safety,” just at a time when the Obama administration is launching an assault on the self-defense rights guarded by the Second Amendment.

“As leaders in Washington prepare an assault on the Second Amendment, a majority of Americans – 61 percent – said they believe that domestic use of drones by government and law enforcement agencies represents a violation of people’s right to privacy,” said Fritz Wenzel, president of Wenzel Strategies.

It was his public-opinion research and media consulting company, Wenzel Strategies, that released the results of a telephone poll conducted for WND. It was taken Jan. 9-12 and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.22 percentage points.

Wenzel said the federal government “has announced plans to use drones domestically in certain circumstances, and the survey finding that 20 percent are just fine with that is shocking.”

Another 18 percent said they aren’t sure about whether the spy drones would violate the privacy of citizens.

“But the survey also shows a shocking willingness of Americans to forfeit their freedoms to the government under the guise of safety, as a plurality of 46 percent said they believe local governments should use cameras to monitor traffic on public roadways,” he said.

The survey recalls Benjamin Franklin’s admonition, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Some 20 percent of respondents said local and state law enforcement agencies should have and use drones with live-broadcast cameras. Of those who considered themselves “very liberal,” 28 percent supported the idea, while only 16 percent of the “very conservative” favored it.

The right end of the political spectrum was more confident of its position, with 72 percent expressing the belief that drones violate privacy laws and only 12 percent were unsure. On the liberal end of the scale, only 46 percent said drones violate privacy and 26 percent were uncertain.

But the poll also indicated Americans have grown accustomed to intrusions by the government.

While 61 percent of Americans still say drones, a relatively new development, violate privacy, only 40 percent say the same thing about red-light cameras, which have been around years longer.

Added Wenzel: “Another 40 percent said they should not be used because they violate the privacy of citizens. At the same time, however, a plurality of 46 percent said they believe those cameras are first and foremost a government grab for cash from citizens and secondly a tool to improve safety. Another 42 percent said they think the cameras mainly promote safe motoring.”

Still, the question about the use of red-light cameras drew a huge split between the left and right ends of the political scale. Some 52 percent of the “very liberal” said government should use cameras, and only 26 percent said they violate privacy. On the other end of the scale, the “very conservative” by a large majority, 59 percent, said they violate privacy. Only 31 percent said government should use the camera.

While red-light and speeding cameras are routine across the country, it also has been confirmed that drones already are spying on Americans.

Records recently released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed the federal government has approved dozens of licenses for unmanned aerial surveillance drones across the United States.

The organization reported there are licenses held by state and local law enforcement agencies, universities along with the Air Force, Marine Corps and DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Some of the records show drones used for purposes as sensible as helping the U.S. Forest Service fight forest fires. But other purposes, such as performing aerial observation of houses when serving warrants or covert surveillance of drug sales, have prompted EFF to question privacy issues.

“Perhaps the scariest is the technology carried by a Reaper drone the Air Force is flying near Lincoln, Nev., and in areas of California and Utah,” EFF reports. “This drone uses ‘Gorgon Stare’ technology, which Wikipedia defines as ‘a spherical array of nine cameras attached to an aerial drone … capable of capturing motion imagery of an entire city.’ … This technology takes surveillance to a whole new level.”

The use of military drones further raised flags in a New York Times report last year, when reporter Mark Mazzetti joined a group of observers watching drone use at Holloman Air Force Base in remote New Mexico and discovered the military was practicing for foreign missions by spying on American vehicles.

“A white SUV traveling along a highway adjacent to the base came into the cross hairs [of the drone's view] and was tracked as it headed south along the desert road,” Mazzetti wrote. “When the S.U.V. drove out of the picture, the drone began following another car.

“‘Wait, you guys practice tracking enemies by using civilian cars?’ a reporter asked,” according to Mazzetti. “One Air Force officer responded that this was only a training mission, and then the group was quickly hustled out of the room.”

EFF clarified that while the U.S. military doesn’t need an FAA license to fly drones over its own military bases, which is “restricted airspace”, it does need a license to fly in the national airspace, which is almost everywhere else in the U.S.

“And, as we’ve learned from these records,” EFF reports, “the Air Force and Marine Corps regularly fly both large and small drones in the national airspace all around the country.”

The response so far has included a plan from Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey to create guidelines and limitations on how the Federal Aviation Administration licenses drones.

In related research, Wenzel also found that one in seven Americans sees a dictator in the nation’s future, and another one in five says it eventually will break up into several sovereign regions. The survey revealed that more than one in four believe the United States likely will collapse not just in their lifetime, but in the next decade.

Also, Wenzel earlier revealed that the seeds of tyranny already are present in America, with a heavily armed law enforcement presence and a population holding a disbelief that their government could do anything that would make them want to revolt.

See detailed results of survey questions:

Do you agree that local or state law enforcement agencies should possess and use drones equipped with live-broadcast cameras flying overhead as part of their policing efforts, or do you believe that the use of drones in domestic policing efforts represents a violation of citizens’ rights to privacy?

Do you agree that local law enforcement agencies should employ cameras to detect and punish automobile drivers who violate speed laws or red light laws at traffic intersections?

Law enforcement officials say traffic cameras and red-light cameras promote safe driving, while opponents say these cameras have little to do with safety and are really nothing more than a way for governments to make more money from citizens through fines and other penalties. Which of these statements do you most believe to be true?
 

 

Success in 2012! Wenzel Strategies Releases Survey Research Memorandum

JANUARY 16, 2013 – We at Wenzel Strategies are already forging ahead with work on the 2013 elections around the country, but we wanted to take a moment to highlight the strong record our firm enjoyed in 2012, and to thank our friends and clients around the country for giving us the privilege to serve you this past year. We look forward to working with you and to adding many new friends to our happy client list in the next 12 months. May 2013 be a great year for you all!

The Wenzel Strategies memorandum on 2012 is here:

Memorandum – 2012 WS Election Survey Recap.

The 2012 Elections: What the Heck Just Happened?

NOVEMBER 8, 2012-There is a book recently published by Monica Crowley that is popular with conservatives that asks the question lots of Republicans have been asking for the last four years: “What the Bleep Just Happened?”

Republicans and conservatives are pondering that question anew in the wake of the November elections. The answer is slowly emerging.

What has been missed is who in this past election became saddled with the mantle of incumbency. In good times, incumbency is a warm blanket that insulates candidates from any bad decisions they might have made in office. In bad times, it becomes a wet blanket that chills while exaggerating bad decisions and heinous flaws in personal and professional life.

 

What was easy to assume, with Democrat Barack Obama in office and presiding over a horrible domestic economy and a foreign policy portfolio that was even worse, was that he would pay the price of incumbency in bad times.

 

He didn’t. Mitt Romney did.

 

And many congressional Republicans did as well.

 

Why? These Republicans allowed themselves to become the issues in the campaign. Democrats shifted the campaign narratives across the country from inflation, unemployment, economic stagnation, to individual flaws of the Republicans.

 

For Mitt Romney, it was his “war on women” or his Cayman Islands investment accounts, or whatever. When he did successfully break through – in the first debate – and concentrate the national focus, however briefly, on Obama and the failures of his first term, we saw rather impressive upward movement in Romney’s poll numbers. But he didn’t follow through, and so the persistent narrative that Obama had painted, especially in Ohio, that Romney didn’t care about regular people.

 

He reverted to the position of incumbent, the person on which voters would decide this election. He lost.

 

Pollsters and consultants across the country whose interpretations of the polling numbers were off the mark were expecting voters to be smarter than they apparently are.  They expected voters to look at Romney’s weaknesses and strengths, and judge them against Obama’s weaknesses and strengths. For the most part, that happened. But what was missed was a predictable behavior displayed by independents in every election – that they almost always go, in massive numbers, to support the challenger over the incumbent in the last days of a campaign.

 

In the race for President, this should have benefitted Romney, but it rather benefitted Obama, who effectively changed positions with Romney. Obama’s ability to become the challenger in the race for the White House gave him the ability to pick up most of those undecided voters in key states, which propelled him to victory.  Pundits who predicted Romney would win Florida, Virginia, and Ohio, were simply not calculating that voters would buy this political sleight of hand. But, undecided voters being what they are – less informed and less sophisticated – fell for the Obama campaign messaging hook, line, and sinker.

 

If you look at the final polls in these key states, what you find is that Romney’s level of support was right about at what he won on Election Day.  It was Obama whose numbers increase significantly in state after state.  This is the key attribute of the challenger, not the incumbent, and is the best evidence of a very smart Obama campaign strategy.

 

If you look at U.S. Senate races and some House races, the same rule applies, in many cases. Many of the final numbers in polls for the Republican candidates is pretty much where they ended up, as Dems sped past them on the backs of late-deciding voters. Races that should have been won by Republicans were lost, largely because the Republican candidates became the issue in the final weeks of the campaign, and these undecided voters ignored some truly awful voting records and corrupt behavior by incumbent Democrats, especially in the Senate races.

 

It was H.L. Mencken who once said that “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” and this appears to have been the guiding principle to the Obama re-election campaign. 

It worked.

 

Presidential Polling: What is the Correct Sample?

COLUMBUS, Ohio-Sept. 26, 2012-There’s a lot of noise out there right now regarding the polling of the race for President of the United States. Some polls show Democrat Barack Obama up by a few points, while others show it is a really close race. Almost no polls show Republican Mitt Romney with a meaningful lead. That does not necessarily reflect what is really going on.

The reasoon Obama seems to enjoy a lead over Romney is straight-forward, and by now, well-explained: it is because the survey sample includes more Democrats than Republicans.

Simple enough.

The next question is the most important: “What is the correct mixture of partisans in a national poll?”

Different pollsters have different answers. Most, especially national media pollsters, have apparently decided that their baseline partisan mix should be based on the results of the 2008 presidential election exit polls.  This is problematic for many reasons – chief among them being that election exit polls today are terribly flawed. Given the growth of vote-by-mail and early voting, it is no longer reasonable to assume that the people who show up to vote in person on Election Day are representative of the voting public as a whole. And then, depending on what time of day an exit poll sampler is gathering data, and at what polls they are gathering data, information can be badly misrepresentative of the electorate they are trying to measure.

Of course, most would agree that the 2008 electorate was not a normal presidential election turnout.  The reasons for this are well-documented – the first time an African-American candidate topped a major party ticket and the collapsing economy being the two most obvious. Knowing this, it is also obvious that pollsters should not use 2008 turnout as their model for surveys gauging this year’s presidential race. That some still do is disturbing because it is tantamount to an admission they would rather be politically correct than statistically correct.

The other factor largely ignored by most pollsters is the rise of the TEA Party movement. Even Rasmussen does not include the TEA Party as a factor in his weighting of survey data for the presidential race. Instead, he has said recently that he uses some formula based on an aggregation of 2004 and 2008 election turnout data.

I appreciate that effort, and it brings Rasmussen closer to reality than most other pollsters, but in order to properly gauge election turnout, some calculation of the effect of the TEA Party movement has to be included, For us pollsters, this is where things get dicey, because we don’t have any presidential election experience in the TEA Party era. We have to make our own turnout models based on an aggregation of previous presidential election turnouts and the 2010 midterm elections, which admittedly is very difficult.

It has been said that public opinion research is part science and part art. This process of weighting our survey samples is the artistic part of the process.  It’s just that some pollsters are more creative than others.

This morning’s release of new surveys of Ohio and Florida voters shows Obama with huge leads over Romney, but those New York Times/Quinnipiac polls also include a 9 percent Democratic Party advantage over Republicans. This is likely because Quinnipiac no longer weights its surveys for partisan affiliation.  It apparently gave up the practice in order to work with the New York Times, whose polling gurus have long eschewed such a step in processing polls.  They simply believe it is proper to take whatever sample they get, and they got far too many Democrats in these two key states.

One more point about university-based polls to measure presidential elections: I have no first-hand knowledge that the Quinnipiac callers skew their interviews to help Barack Obama, but you should know that all of those survey interviews are conducted by college kids, the vast majority of which are very likely to support Obama over Romney. It simply introduces another opportunity for error to be injected into the polling process.

 ####

Wenzel Strategies: Right Yet Again!

Wenzel Strategies congratulates newly minted Texas Republican Senate nominee Ted Cruz for his runaway win in Tuesday’s election to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison. His margin of victory over David Dewhurst was an impressive 57% to 43% margin, which was almost identical to the outcome of the trendsetting Wenzel Strategies poll of the race. The survey, commissioned by Citizens United Political Victory Fund, showed that, when undecideds were accounted for, Cruz led Dewhurst by a 56% to to 44% margin, which was almost identical to the outcome.

This result is just the latest of many races around the country where Wenzel Strategies has been right on the money – and very early – in identifying trends among voters. Notable in that list is the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Indiana, where Wenzel Strategies identified that challenger Richard Mourdock was closing in on, and then leading longtime incumbent Richard Lugar. Lugar’s campaign complained bitterly about the Wenzel Strategies poll, charging it was badly off target. In the end, of course, it was Lugar who was badly misguided, and headed toward an embarrassing defeat.

Another groundbreaking Wenzel Strategies poll came in the Republican Senate nomination race in Nebraska, where a WS poll late in the race showed underdog Deb Fischer leading favorite Jon Bruning. The Wenzel Strategies poll proved prescient, as Fischer blew Bruning away.  And now, Texas, where Cruz was once thought to have no chance – until Wenzel Strategies found that not only was he competitive with Dewhurst, but that he was leading.

“There is no doubt that the electorate this year is very volatile, and in such a political atmosphere you must be extra careful to understand the dynamics at play in each race and to properly and objectively gather and process raw polling data,” said Fritz Wenzel, President of  Wenzel Strategies. “This is the key to our considerable success in polling, especially  this year. We understand politics, and we understand political research. We are very pleased with this latest success, and with our record of success across the nation.

“Some polling companies poll simply as an exercise to get a certain result. We poll to discover what voters, and all Americans, are really thinking. That’s what our clients want to know – whether it is good or bad news for them – and that is what we produce: truthful, honest, accurate, reliable results that provide answers to the questions that are burning in their minds,” Wenzel said. “We produce excellent research, and we put research to work for our clients.”