While certainly the vast majority of peHUB's readers are private equity and venture capital professionals, the site's polling was admittedly unscientific. The simple Internet survey allowed anyone to vote -- including me (and that's not good). So how representative were the 1,400 respondents? While the poll was hosted by peHUB, FT Alphaville and other financial blogs highlighted it. It appeared at least twice on MySpace News, which clips stories from various blogs, thus attracting attention from the non-PE rabble.
In the end, the poll really doesn't offer any guidance as to how PE professionals will vote. Our best (although still limited) guide remains the Federal Election Commission's database of campaign contributions. - Matthew Wurtzel
See related post about FEC data from Dealscape
Comments
The results are in from the peHUB Presidential Preference Poll and the winner is -- ta-dah -- Sen. Barack Obama by a razor-thin margin. However, does it really tell us anything about either private equity political preferences or the election? Not really.
I agree with everything you said Matt, but it's worth noting something: That analysis of FEC contributions shows that Obama has raised far more PE contributions than has McCain. If we judged it by those standards -- which also are self-selecting - then Obama is leading ndustry sentiment by a landslide.