Why would a community newspaper publish a political poll?

This week, the Evanston RoundTable published its first election survey — an independent poll of voter preferences in the Democratic primary for the important 9th Congressional District seat.

Our mission on the local politics beat is to help voters make informed choices. We’ve been doing that this election season with comprehensive coverage of the key races, including candidate profiles, guides, interviews and more. You can find all of our coverage collected on our election page.

Making sense of the 9th District race, which features a field of more than a dozen candidates, has been especially challenging. Conversations with voters across the district — and polling conducted by campaigns — suggested three front-runners, but we wanted to get a broader sense of support for the entire field and to understand the issues that matter most to the electorate. And we hoped to add clarity with the first independent poll conducted by a news organization. We also plan to publish a second wave closer to the March 17 election.