It’s customary to quibble with polls, especially the hit-and-miss polls published in the Review-Journal conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. (We at Various Things & Stuff once won a nice bottle of wine from R-J Editor Tom Mitchell after he foolishly bought into an R-J poll that suggested U.S. Sen. John Kerry was 10 points down in Nevada shortly before the 2004 election. Kerry lost the race to President George W. Bush, but by a margin of 50.4 percent to 47.8 percent.)

And while we think a question asking whether the military should “cut its losses” is bound to produce negative results, we’re not going the conspiracy route this time. Let’s take a look at the hard numbers in our favorite parlor game, Governorpalloza 2006.

The poll shows what all other polls have show: Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons is the overall front-runner, and he runs strong in the northern and rural areas of Nevada. It also confirms that state Sen. Dina Titus runs stronger against Gibbons than her primary opponent, Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson. According to the poll, Gibbons would beat Titus 45 percent to 36 percent with 19 percent undecided; he’d beat Gibson 47 percent to 32 percent with 21 percent undecided.

Yes, it’s still all name-recognition at this point. And remember those double-digit undecided numbers, folks. As those undecided voters break for their favorites, they’ll turn the race. And that means Titus, Gibson and Gibbons want to define themselves nicely just as they want to define their opponent as, say, the devil. And with Gibbons’ unfavorable rating rising just a bit (17 percent in this poll versus 12 percent in a May poll), you may just see that process already playing out.

Surprise of the day: Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt, whom most people leave out of their calculations, beats both Titus (40-35, with 25 undecided) and Gibson (39-38, with 23 undecided). You go, girl!

As for the poll results on the police salary increase, well, what can one expect? First, the R-J saturates the paper with critical coverage of the salary pact; then the paper editorializes against it; then the paper covers the reaction to its coverage; then it does a poll and discovers — oh, my God! — people are against it. Shocking.

The numbers are fairly strong: 54 percent say they’re against the agreement, which would see costs rise by about 25 percent over the life of the four-year pact; 35 percent are in support and 11 percent are undecided.

But when pollster Matt Coker goes beyond the numbers to suggest that the current raise is too much, but an amount roughly one-quarter or even half that would be OK with voters, it makes it seem as if the R-J is trying to run the police department. (Then again, that’s only due to the fact that the R-J really is trying to run the department, we’re sure.)

But we’ll give the R-J some credit: Including merit and longevity pay in the total salary numbers is not unfair, as the police union contends. Merit increases (which are automatic) are part of the overall costs to taxpayers, and it’s only fair to mention them in the coverage, even if they are not part of the current salary negotiations. Taxpayers deserve to be told the full story, and merit and longevity pay is part of that.