Bill Thompson: I'm Not Worried About Polls Or Weiner

From Capital NY:

"I think these polls are wildly inaccurate, I think they will continue to be that, and I don't place—to be blunt about it—I pay almost no attention to them," Thompson told reporters after a speech at Hostos Community College. "They really don't matter."

Thompson has reasonable grounds for skepticism. He cited the 2009 polls that predicted Thompson would lose in a "blowout" to Michael Bloomberg, when he actually only lost by a few points. And his eventual support among certain key constituencies in the Democratic primary are arguably more likely to be underpredicted in current polls (which show him trailing both Christine Quinn and Anthony Weiner among African-American voters, for example) than any other candidate's.

A Marist poll released yesterday showed Thompson holding steady at just 11 percent support, trailing Quinn, Weiner and Bill de Blasio.

Asked if he was concerned about the amount of attention that Weiner currently commands, Thompson shrugged.

"Eh, I think the one thing that you realize is that things come and go," Thompson said. "There's ebb and flow. I just continue to move forward with the campaign. We're continuing to ratchet things up on a daily basis."

"Am I concerned about it?" he added. "No, not really. I think that in the end it comes down to people are going to have to make a decision in September when they go to the polls. If I present a vision for the city of New York, if I'm in front of them and they know that I'm out there and they agree with that direction and that vision, I believe they're going to vote for me."

Thompson also had some good proposals here:

Thompson was taking questions after a 20-minute speech on how the city can combat poverty, by focusing on job training and "mid-range office jobs," while improving access to housing, food and health care.

He proposed a program called “Partnering with Parents” that would offer expanded educational opportunities to low-income single parents, and said he would priotorize homeless families in receiving Section 8 housing, along with creating a Chief Jobs Officer for his administration.

Thompson has a point that polls in 2009 undercounted his support.

But Thompson fails to remind us that his campaign didn't have an internal pollster so they had no idea how close they were to beating Bloomberg.