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Monday, August 21, 2006

NH-02: Hodes (D) Internal Poll Shows Dead Heat

Posted by DavidNYC

Anzalone-Liszt Research for netroots candidate Paul Hodes (likely voters including leaners, no trendlines):

Hodes (D): 42
Bass (R-inc.): 43
Undecided: 15
(MoE: ±4%)

Without leaners, it's a pure tie, 40-40. The absolutely amazing thing is that Bass has full name recognition - 94%. Hodes, meanwhile, is at just 27%. The only thing which can explain this is extreme voter dissastisfaction with incumbents and Republicans. Charlie Bass, of course, is both.

And this is born out by the other questions asked by the poll. An impressive 69% of second district voters give George Bush a negative approval rating, while 75% do the same for Congress. Interestingly, a whopping 79% approve of Democratic Gov. John Lynch, who is cruising to re-election. Clearly, New Hampshirites like the Dems back home but are sick of the Republicans who have lost touch down in Washington.

While I don't have the party ID breakdown for this poll, the accompanying press release notes:

The polling sample used reflects the slight Republican registration advantage of the 2nd district.

Earlier today, I happened to crunch the numbers myself, based on the data available from the NH Secretary of State. Turns out that registration in the 2nd CD is 30R-26D-44I - a four-point net GOP advantage. And these numbers are a couple of years old - if anything, I'd believe the GOP edge is a bit smaller now.

So remember that UNH poll we disected a while back? It had a partisan breakdown of 32R-23D-38I, a nine-point Republican edge. Clearly, that just doesn't reflect reality. The Hodes people - like the folks at most campaigns - want accurate numbers so that they can have a proper sense of how the field looks. Academic operations are much less concerned with partisan weighting. So if you ask me which numbers I trust, I'm inclined to think the Hodes survey is a lot closer to reality.

And since this is the netroots fundraising push week, I of course will end this post with an exhortation to donate to Paul Hodes and all the netroots candidates!

P.S. You can read the complete polling memo summary here (PDF).

Posted at 08:11 PM in 2006 Elections - House, New Hampshire | Technorati

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Comments

It's not an independent poll, though, is it?

It's still much better news.

Posted by: DemocraticLuntz at August 21, 2006 10:21 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

This is amazing news.

The fact that it's tied with such wide variance in name recognition - well, I'm speechless.

Take bow; you believed in this race long before others did.

(and Bass is TOAST, I might add!)

Posted by: yankeedoodler at August 21, 2006 10:22 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

No, it's not independent - but the UNH poll was "independent" and didn't really reflect reality, given that it used a 9-point GOP advantage. And I'm given to understanding that Anzalone-Liszt is one of the better Dem polling firms.

Posted by: DavidNYC at August 21, 2006 10:52 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Thank you thank you thank you for posting the polling memo. Can you post all Anzalone-lizst house race memos.

I link to them from the 50 state page and not having access to all the detail is crappy!

Posted by: BENAWU at August 22, 2006 05:06 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Benawu, I don't have any others to offer. But try this Google search (for AL, PDFs only) - you might get some helpful hits.

Posted by: DavidNYC at August 22, 2006 10:07 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment