Repoll man; one politician's solution to the preelection polls that almost sunk him: one more poll.

• Author: Keisling, Paul

Readers of the May 16, 1992, Oregonian couldn't help but draw a conclusion about my bid to win the Democratic nomination for secretary of state, Oregon's second ranking state office: I was toast.

With just three days until the primary, I was 11 points behind my chief rival, the state's four-term labor commissioner, Mary Wendy Roberts. True, I'd made some progress. Six weeks earlier, I'd been 25 points behind, according to an earlier Oregonian poll. But this Il-point gap, so close to the election, was bleak news. I began working on my concession speech.

Three days later I scored an "upset" victory by a convincing seven-point margin. So what happened? What combination of my brilliant strategy and/or my opponent% strategic blunders had tipped the balance? Did all the news-. paper endorsements turn the tide? My record of redistricting the legislature and conducting aggressive performance audits of government programs? Or was it the stirring Aaron Copeland music that accompanied my television commercials?

Danreed if I know. And neither the Oregonian nor anyone else seemed interested in finding out. That's because, beyond the requisite exit polls--whose sole object is to establish the winner as early as possible--polling almost always stops on election day, depriving candidates and voters of answers to a question more important than "who?" Why?

The why of elections could easily be answered with another poll, a day or two after the fact, asking voters what factors influenced theft decisions. This sort of postmortem would shed light on how to fine-tune future preelection polls. Postelection polls might even wean the press and deep-pocket contributors--who often affect races by making more than they should of these surveys--from their current poll addiction. But perhaps their most important function would be served well after the election is over. Postelection polls might give all of us a better sense of what is important to American voters.

Poll cats

The absence of postelection surveys is puzzling, given the increasing prevalence of media-financed polling, and it's not just the CBSs and Newsweeks of the world that devote tens, or hundreds, of thousands of dollars to preelection surveys. Today, a growing number of daily newspapers and local TV stations are rushing into the act. More and more, their polls are going beyond the "top of the ticket" presidential and senatorial races to include state, mayoral, and even city council contests.

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