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Tuesday, June 13, 2006

OH-Sen: New SUSA Poll Shows Brown Leading By 9 Points

Posted by James L.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why the OH-Sen polling is all over the place. Just when you think DeWine has a powerful lead, another firm comes out with a poll showing Brown on top, sometimes by equally powerful margins. And vice versa. Over, and over, and over again. Stop the insanity! What, pray tell, could possibly be swinging this race back and forth so much?

Anyway, here's the latest take from SUSA (likely voters, no trendlines):

Sherrod Brown (D): 48
Mike DeWine (R): 39
(MoE: ±4.4%)

As far as I can tell, this is the first Survey USA poll on the race. Conventional wisdom says that one should disregard the wild fluctuations of these polls until a clear trend one way or the other is seen. Until then, I'm going to still consider this a tight one.

Posted at 02:09 PM in 2006 Elections - Senate, Ohio | Technorati

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Comments

Smells like an outlier, but hold on tight if it isn't!

Posted by: Mark at June 13, 2006 02:34 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Most polls we've seen in Ohio are from Rasmussen who seems to apply the same samples to every state poll, often tilted Republican. It'd be nice if we could get a more diverse poll selection out of both Ohio and Missouri to help us better determine how strong McCaskill and Brown's chances are. I can't imagine Survey USA could be this far off here as their work is usually pretty convincing.

Posted by: Mark at June 13, 2006 02:36 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

James,
you didn't mention the other half of that poll:

37% Blackwell (R)
53% Strickland (D)

16 is a huge lead in a race that was supposed to be tight!

Posted by: bawbie at June 13, 2006 06:17 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Nah, most have predicted that Strickland will have quite an easy time of defeating Blackwell... while even the thought of him as a governor cries out millions of shrills, the realism is that any poll showing Strickland under a double-digit lead is actually the outlier. Now, this Brown poll is quite interesting. If at the very least, I hope that Strickland's cottails will bring Brown over the finish line, or more.

So, as far as pick-up opportunities go, Pennsylvania--> Montana--> Ohio--> Missouri--> Rhode Island--> Tennessee--> Virginia--> Arizona--> Nevada ?? how about it.

Posted by: KainIIIC at June 14, 2006 02:20 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I wouldn't put Ohio or Missouri ahead of Rhode Island. Chafee is in real trouble, and, even if he beats Laffey in the primary, he'll be at a serious fundraising disadvantage against Sheldon Whitehouse, with whom he is running dead-even, according to a new Rasmussen poll. Add to that the inherently Democratic nature of the state, and the pickup opportunity looks golden. Ohio and Missouri are not as blue as Rhode Island, and neither has as many galvanizing candidates.

Other than that, you're dead-on.

Posted by: The Caped Composer at June 14, 2006 11:48 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Interesting results on the cross-tabs from the Ohio race.

Apparently SUSA polled a VERY republican young electorate and a VERY democratic elderly electorate.
Blackwell was running even with STrickland (and DeWine was beating the begeesus out of Brown) for voters under 35 with the exact opposite occurring (especially in the senate race) for voters over 65. Hmmm....seems a little odd to me.

Posted by: nada at June 15, 2006 09:40 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I'm baffled too, and have no idea what it means. I guess it just depends on who you talk to. The fact remains that Brown is running an uninspiring campaign and needs to step it up. There's an opportunity for a pick-up here but so far, it seems like Brown is just counting on everyone just being able to see what a good guy he is, rather than working to convince them they should vote for him. No one has ever predicted the Strickland/Blackwell race would be "close" except for newspapers and pundits who like a tight race, and the despair-mongers who think Blackwell will steal the election so Strickland should just quit now.

The dead-even results for Blackwell and Strickland under 35 baffled me too. Since Blackwell's main issues to date have been abortion, which personally affects younger voters more tha older ones, and gays, while studies have shown homophobia decreases the younger you go, this makes no sense. And Strickland has been campaigning vigorously on issues like making college more affordable.

Posted by: Ansatasia P at June 15, 2006 01:30 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Blackwell cannot defeat Strickland. I don't know why this race is getting so much play. Although he will improve on the Republican's performance amongst black voters substantially those gains will more than be offset by white voters drawn to Strickland's NRA voting record and moderation. And never discount the proportion older, white conservativeso who will not vote for a black candidate.

Posted by: wjpugliese at June 16, 2006 06:49 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment