The Valley Independent's online poll became almost as important as the New Hampshire primary earlier this week, at least in some circles.
Supporters of Mike Fisher's bid for governor proved they mean business in response to a "Valley Question" aimed at the public's choice between him and Democrat Ed Rendell.
After Fisher, the state attorney general, fell to Rendell in the poll by only a few votes in June and July, red flags went up when Fisher started to develop an overwhelming lead Monday.
Staff at PittsburghLIVE, which operates The Valley Independent web site, received a copy of an e-mail from the Fisher campaign that urged supporters to log on and vote for the Republican gubernatorial nominee.
When PittsburghLIVE managing editor Mark Whittaker saw Fisher had surged ahead of Rendell by a whopping count of 466 to 109 - more than four fold the votes Fisher garnered in previous months - he decided to remove the question from the web site.
"Looks to me like they succeed ed in skewing the results a little bit," Whittaker said. "It's just political gamesmanship."
Whittaker said the result defeated the purpose of the poll - to produce an unbiased opinion from a pool of Valley Independent readers.
Bob Burke, managing editor of The Valley Independent, said he began the "Valley Question" as a way to gauge public opinion.
Burke said he intended to run the gubernatorial question each month leading to the election to get a pre-poll forecast for the November election.
"There was a method to it," Burke said. "We were tracking it monthly to see how it changed."
Burke and Whittaker decided to discontinue the question because the results had become unfair.
