Sunday, June 14, 1998
The Associated Press
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A survey cited by U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell as evidence of support for his buyout plan for tobacco growers has drawn skepticism from polling experts and opponents of the senator's proposal.
Independent pollsters said the survey of tobacco farmers by the Tobacco Fairness Coalition was seriously flawed. The coalition did not follow commonly accepted methods of polling and the results cannot be said to represent the views of Kentucky farmers, the experts told the Courier-Journal.
"It definitely is not scientific in any sense," said Marc Maynard, assistant director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut.
Mr. McConnell, R-Ky., has claimed that the survey shows 63 percent of burley tobacco growers in Kentucky and Tennessee support an end to the tobacco price-support program and a three-year buyout that pays farmers $8 per pound.
The coalition is a lobbying group headed by North Carolina farmers who stand to benefit more from a buyout than most in Kentucky, where the average grower produces much less tobacco.
The polling experts pointed to several problems with the survey, which was mailed to about 15,000 burley growers: It was accompanied by a letter stating the coalition's pro-buyout position and asking for financial support, and only about 1,000 farmers returned the survey, a rate of response that is too low to provide reliable results, the pollsters said.
"What you've got is non-representative results," said Ronald Langley, director of the University of Kentucky Survey Research Center.
Mr. McConnell was not available for an interview, but his press secretary, Robert Steurer, defended the senator's use of the survey findings.
"The only salient issue is that the Tobacco Fairness Coalition polled Kentucky and Tennessee burley tobacco growers and 63 percent of them favored a buyout of their quota," he said. The coalition has entered the tobacco debate with surveys, money-raising appeals to tobacco farmers and press releases backing the proposal by Mr. McConnell, which he is co-sponsoring with Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind.
The coalition has no office, no employees and no telephone number -- only a post-office-box address in Wilson, N.C., the Louisville newspaper reported Saturday. But it has solid links to North Carolina tobacco interests.
