Word on the street, Ward campaign says, is that he's leading

Some 6th Congressional District Republican primary campaigns have commissioned pollsters to survey how the race is playing out.

But Steve Ward's campaign prefers to poll 6th District voters the old-fashioned way: by going door-to-door themselves and asking them.

Ward and about 90 campaign canvassers have talked to about 2,400 6th District residents (out of about 10,000 houses hit in total) from around the district since the state senator from Littleton began campaigning in March.

And what they're hearing, said Ward manager Christine Burtt, is much different than what their competition is reporting.

They've found Ward leading in the four-man GOP primary with support nearing 30 percent and suggests a two-candidate race between him and Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman.

Coffman, the Ward campaign said in an e-mail, is "stable in the low 20s." But Coffman "has the Hillary problem: people like him or they don't," the e-mail stated. "Coffman has very high negatives at the door."

Businessman Wil Armstrong polls in the "low teens" - "People associate his mortgage banker businessman label with his family name and money," the e-mail stated.

State Sen. Ted Harvey (R-Highlands Ranch), the e-mail stated, has support "around 10%."

"He's not widely known," the e-mail concluded.

Burtt readily volunteered that the poll was not scientific. But, she said, "it's as random (of a sampling) and it gets the same results as what (other campaigns) would get if they called on the phone."

"We think this is as valid as any of the rest" of internal 6th District GOP campaign polls, she said.

Armstrong manager Jack Stansbery said their door-to-door informal polling shows Armstrong walking away with the 6th District GOP primary with about 80 percent support. By comparison, internal poll numbers released by the Armstrong campaign earlier this week show Armstrong and Coffman polling just over 30 percent, with Ward in fourth place with 8.4 percent.

"Anecdotes are good for motivating the troops and keeping energy levels up," Stansbery said. "But it's naïve to rely on that for an accurate description of where you're at at any kind of time."

Coffman manager Dustin Zvonek said in "every poll that we've ever seen, Steve (Ward) is definitely in the lower half" of the four candidates.

"The reality is that when you go up to somebody's door, and you're there, they'll say "Oh, yeah, sure, whatever' - they want you off their front porch, most of the time," Zvonek said.

Harvey's campaign did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment late Friday afternoon.

Even Ward's campaign played down the reliability of polling in general (and especially their competition's), saying in the e-mail that if polls were used back in Mark Twain's day, he "likely would have included" them in the saying (attributed to Twain) that "There are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies, and statistics."

"The only poll that counts," the e-mail stated, "is the one on August 12."