Portland’s city government ran a survey of the residents therein to see if the government folks could understand the major problem facing those residents in the eyes of the residents.  Homelessness was the biggie, with 88% of respondents saying so.

Respondents also had decidedly mixed views of the city’s future.

…45% of respondents said they felt positively about the city’s future, while an equal number declaring [sic] their pessimism.

On the matter of race, there’s this:

Asked to react to the statement that Portland is “making progress on becoming a city where a person’s outcomes are not based on their race,” 40% of respondents agreed with its sentiment and an equal number disagreed. Black residents were most likely to disagree.

But here’s the money quote, and it throws the whole thing into a cocked hat.

Results likely would have been more unflattering if officials did not weight the survey responses based on the race of respondents. Responses from the 12% of survey takers who declined to state their race were disregarded. Those people were “more likely to feel negatively about the future of Portland,” according to the survey report. They were also more likely to name safety and trust in government as city challenges.

45% of a carefully selected subset of respondents.  Forty per cent of a carefully selected subset of respondents.

Hmm….

What we have here is city government deliberately skewing the results by throwing out responses it didn’t like or thought it wouldn’t like.  On top of that, they did the skewing right out in the open, which shows pretty conclusively their achievement of the near impossible: they’re simultaneously oblivious and dishonest.

This is the Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) influence.

h/t The Great Adventure at Ricochet