. . . Polls asking website visitors to voice an opinion or make a prediction are far from scientific, and make no claim to having canvassed a representative sample of readers, much less the general population.   Nonetheless, I clicked on a link to an article in Monday’s Albany Business Review that gives the results of their current/latest un-scientific poll of readers as to which city will “win” theCapital Region casino license. (“Anticipation grows as casino decision approaches“, Dec. 1, 2014, by Todd Kehoe).” According to the article (emphasis added):

“An Albany Business Review poll published last week asked readers which of the four Capital Region communities will win the competition for a license. Of the nearly 2,000 people who voted as of 6:30 p.m. Sunday, 47 percent picked Cobleskill in Schoharie County. Another 22 percent picked Schenectady, 20 percent selected East Greenbush and Rensselaer grabbed the other 11 percent.

“The poll is not a scientific sampling and is intended to give insight into what readers are thinking.”

So, only 22% of the survey participants thought Schenectady was the most likely winner.  Particularly interesting to me is how different their poll results were last August:

“In the August poll, 61.5 percent of those who responded, picked Schenectady as the most likely winner of a casino license. Rensselaer finished second with 21.7 percent of the vote, followed by East Greenbush with 9 percent and Cobleskill with 2.8 percent”. [emphasis added]

You can see a chart of the results of the latest ABR casino poll here (or by clicking the image at the top of this posting), and can go here to Vote (look for an image of two red dice with a green background).

 A Schenectady Gazette Poll in October asked “What do you think of Schenectady’s chances of getting a casino?” It got a result similar to the Albany Business Review‘s August Poll:  58% of the 649 Gazette voters said Schenectady was the Heavy Favorite.  Naturally, it was easy for us to reject the Gazette‘s results in October as unscientific and the result of local bias.   Of course, we’ve got no more reason to have strong faith in the newer ABR results —  other than its having in general a less parochial readership.  Nonetheless, we hope its survey showing Cobleskill as the favorite is accurate.  And, until the Times Union explains its assertion, with sources and reasoning, that Schenectady is considered the favorite (repeated in an article today), we’re going to ignore TU‘s attempt at handicapping the competition.

The latest ABR survey shows only 11% of respondents naming Rennselaer as the favorite. It remains to be seen if the maneuvering of the Hard Rock folk at De Laet’s Landing in Rennselaer, offering Albany $1.1 million a year and job assistance and promising another half million dollars to build a permanent dock for the replica ship Half Moon, can win them a license for Rennselaer. (see the TU coverage here) Since there appears to be no real opposition to the De Laet’s Landing proposal, we at Stop the Schenectady Casino send them our best wishes, as we do for the Cobleskill application.