Nationally acclaimed pollster Brad Coker sits on the sofa in his Columbia home, drinking water and munching soda crackers, sounding very much like a man about to retire.
And maybe he is.
Mr. Coker talks about his health -- he has an ulcer -- about moving to Florida, and about how he's accomplished nearly everything he hoped for when he started his Columbia-based polling business, Mason-Dixon Political Media Research, 12 years ago.
At the very least, Mr. Coker hopes to cut back on the amount of work he does at Mason-Dixon, becoming more of what he calls a "CEO type" and letting other people "do the heavy lifting."
The conversation seems surreal, somehow premature for a 35-year-old man at the top of his profession and considered a treasure by local politicians.
"Anyone in Howard County who doesn't talk to Brad Coker is over looking one of the county's great resources," says State Sen.-elect Martin G. Madden. "His breadth of insight is especially valuable. He's got the pulse of a lot of people. Any little crumb he throws my way, I'll gladly take. . . He has the expertise for dealing with local, state and national trends and he does that better than anybody. "
But Mr. Coker says that these days he's "starting to think in a different way -- the thrills are not quite there anymore."
A self-proclaimed workaholic, Mr. Coker spent 15 to 16 hours a day this year analyzing 162 races for media clients in 36 states, including The Baltimore Sun. He nailed 159 of them, correctly picking not only the winners, but the spread. In two other races, he picked the winners, but the spread was "a little off" -- slightly wider than he had predicted.
DTC And in the one race in which he was flat wrong, the Arizona gubernatorial contest, there were mitigating circumstances. A week before the election, Mr. Coker had predicted Democrat Eddie Basha would beat Republican Fife Symington "unless Mr. Basha did something stupid in the last week of the campaign."
Mr. Basha did and lost, Mr. Coker says.
"If candidates never made mistakes, polls taken a week out would be right 99 percent of the time," he says. A poll is "a snapshot of a moving target," he says. "An election is fluid. Sometimes what you catch is the moment."
It also is art as much as science. "It isn't what the numbers are, it's what they say," Mr. Coker says.
Four years ago, for example, Mr. Coker conducted a final poll in Howard County a week before the election showing incumbent County Executive M. Elizabeth Bobo beating Republican challenger Charles I. Ecker by a 44 percent to 41 percent margin.
Yet, in his analysis, Mr. Coker predicted Mr. Ecker would win by 300 votes. Mr. Ecker won by 244 votes in a 52,000-vote election.
Mr. Coker's prediction grew from a moving-target theory. Earlier polls had shown Ms. Bobo peaking at 44 percent while Mr. Ecker was rising steadily. By comparing what was happening in Howard County with what was happening in Maryland and other state races he was tracking, Mr. Coker correctly inferred that most voters still undecided would opt for Mr. Ecker on election night.
It is that kind of accuracy that has led newspapers and television stations across the country to call on Mr. Coker for polling and analysis.
"It's phenomenal, the accuracy of this poll," says Elliott Wiser, news director and former state capital reporter for a Richmond television station. Mr. Coker's final Chuck Robb-Oliver North poll a week before the U.S. Senate election in Virginia correctly predicted the final vote, Mr. Wiser says.
But the 15- to 16-hour days Mr. Coker has put into his operation to make sure he's been accurate over the past 12 years have taken their toll. "My mind goes 100 miles an hour," he says. "I'm sitting here wondering, 'What did I do to myself?' "
His ulcer is not new. It first appeared 12 years ago and led indirectly to his getting into the polling business. "It was late 1982," he says. "I had tried law school and didn't like it, tried grad school and didn't like it, and run for the [Howard County] Democratic Central Committee and didn't make it."
But he remained fascinated by politics and decided to do something that no one else was doing on a regular basis -- tracking statewide candidates and issues for local news operations. He had intended to do only political polling, but within a couple of years, someone asked him if he could do a performance survey for the Columbia Association.
"Sure, I can do that," he said at the time, and about 20 percent of his business is now devoted to corporate clients ranging from state bar associations to recreation facilities around the world. These still include the Columbia Association.
"I like working with local businesses," he says. "It's a little different change of pace."
Local people -- especially politicians -- are always calling him for advice, which he dispenses freely. But not much longer, perhaps.
Staying home "eating crackers, drinking water, resting and waiting for the doctor to call" with a report on his ulcer mirrors the experience he had 12 years ago, he says.
"My staff thinks I am just stressed out, but I am wondering if this is another crossroads," he says. "I have hit all my goals. The only thing left is to make more money but how much more do I need? I'm comfortable but not significantly rich."
The thing he finds most attractive now is the idea of owning a condominium in Florida. "With modems and fax machine and a laptop, I could do 90 percent of what I do here, sitting on a deck, looking at the ocean," he says.
Or he could do something entirely new.
"Very few people my age have accomplished what I have accomplished," he says. "It may be time to take another risk and see where it leads me."
Meanwhile, he's taking the idea of moving to Florida very seriously. He hopes to give it a trial run this summer after his second child is born.
C7 "If we like it, we might never come back," he says.