Here at Mixed Media, we love polls, even if they might be a bunch of crap. Polls are to political junkies what crystal meth is to everybody else.

If there were any doubts that the 2007 Birmingham mayoral race was already underway, last week the Birmingham Weekly received the first Phantom Alabama Power Poll. Also, mayoral hopeful Patrick Cooper is circulating an in-house poll, and we’ll give you three guesses what it says.

Of course it would be totally irresponsible of us to publish any poll numbers we couldn’t confirm, but when has that ever stopped us before? Get the goods after the jump.

It’s almost a tradition of Birmingham campaigns that someone will claim to have the Alabama Power poll numbers. It’s well known, although maybe something of a myth, that Alabama Power commissions some of the best polling around. And as the story goes, Alabama Power polls everything, from who will be the next mayor of Birmingham to what kind of toppings Hoover residents like on their pizzas. The Alabama Power poll knows all and sees all.

Like Bigfoot, Chupacabra or Jimmy Blake, nobody has actually seen the poll, but everyone knows someone who has — a friend of a cousin or some such. They swear it’s real, they know it exists, and they have a fuzzy snapshot of it that they want to show you.

But enough with the disclaimers. Here is our very first Phantom Alabama Power poll. Caveat emptor, readers. This is likely total BS.

Larry Langford: 41 percent
Bernard Kincaid: 13 percent
William Bell: 8 percent
Carole Smitherman: 6 percent
Patrick Cooper: 4 percent
Undecided: 15 percent

The poll omits City Councilor Valerie Abbott, which makes us doubt its authenticity.

And the phantom poll runs completely counter to a poll released this week by the Patrick Cooper campaign that says — surprise, surprise — Cooper is in the lead. Who would have thought? Not us. Not yet. But anyway, here’s what they’re shopping around.

Patrick Cooper: 29.8 percent
Larry Langford: 22.0 percent
Bernard Kincaid: 10.3 percent
William Bell: 8.5 percent
Undecided: 29.5 percent.

Could any of these numbers be real?

Any numbers from a campaign are obviously suspect. Anybody can cook a poll, but this one smells burnt. In November, a similar poll commissioned by Cooper’s campaign showed him at 6 percent. So what accounts for the big number at the top? Well, conspicuously missing from this poll are Valerie Abbott and Carole Smitherman, and both candidates, along with Cooper, have overlapping constituencies of independent black voters and liberal white voters. Without those rivals in the poll, Cooper’s number would be a lot bigger. Also, Cooper has been the only candidate so far running a genuine campaign.

Southern Research Partners conducted the poll, according to the media advisory, but we haven’t figured out yet who that is. The poll was taken of 400 likely Birmingham voters, which is a large enough sample, but the release did not say specifically what the question was or how it was asked.

Cooper’s poll follows on the heels of an unscientific Internet poll done by the Birmingham Business Journal.

Patrick Cooper: 52 percent
Larry Langford: 15 percent
Valerie Abbott: 7 percent
Bernard Kincaid: 6 percent
Carole Smitherman: 5 percent
William Bell: 3 percent
Other: 11 percent

As an online sample, the poll doesn’t mean much in the way of potential voters, but it might be a good barometer of how Daddy Warbuckses of the business world might distribute their campaign cash this year. The poll is still on-going, so feel free to go there and skew it any way you please.

Like it? Don’t like it? Put it in your pipe and smoke it.

— Kyle Whitmire