Looking over Wal-Mart's recent poll, you'd think New Yorkers just can't wait until the big box store plops down and makes East New York a shopping destination. But could you believe that the data may be skewed? According to a poll of 300 small retail shop owners, Wal-Mart would be bad for business, and 73% of grocery and convenience store owners rejected the idea of a Wal-Mart in New York. Brad Gerstman of survey conductors Gotham Government Relations told the Daily News, "We decided to do this poll because the results of the Walmart one struck us as absolutely impossible."
Gerstman insists that the poll is unbiased, though Gotham has previously said that Wal-Mart would "drive a dagger into the heart of the entrepreneurial spirit” of the city. According to their survey, just 32% of the polled stores didn't have a problem with Wal-Mart and 11% didn't know or care about the issue. "The results likely would have revealed far more against, if the respondents were aware that many local retailers would have been put out of business with the emergence of Walmart, as has been demonstrated in other cities," said Gotham lawyer David Schwartz.
Wal-Mart spokesman Steve Restivo questioned, "Who else [has Gotham] done polls for? I thought they were lobbyists not pollsters. From our perspective, it is telling that Gristedes couldn't get the results they wanted from a scientific poll - like ours was - and instead had to ask their lobbyist to do an informal one with preselected retail shops." Ah yes, Wal-Mart, renowned for their commitment to science.
