We regularly come by polls at SSP that are either dodgy, dull, or both. While we don’t intend to give them all air time, enough have blasted out of the circus cannon in the last week to justify this roundup. Here’s what we’ve got:
• IL-Sen: Some anonymous Republican outfit leaked a poll to Lynn Sweet, but only offered some transparently selective questions – two Mark Kirk head-to-heads that showed him tied with Alexi Giannoulias and Chris Kennedy, son of RFK. There’s also a Dem primary poll which shows Jan Schakowsky leading the pack with all of 20%. Nothing (released?) on Lisa Madigan.
• NH-Sen: Why is it that universities in the Granite State keep polling Cloud Hampshire? Dartmouth is the latest offender, ginning up a 32R-28D sample (real numbers: 29D-29R). Still, Paul Hodes leads John Sununu 38-35, though he somehow has much lower numbers against Charlie Bass, 31-30. No way the Bassmaster inspires a seven-point dither.
• NY-Gov: Quinnipiac’s latest poll is just fine, but there’s really nothing new to see here: Paterson gets pounded by Cuomo and Rudy. Same old. There is one notable datapoint: Cuomo’s lead against Giuliani has slipped from 53-36 to 47-41. The pollster offers no real explanation for this, and I’d personally like to see confirmation elsewhere.
• NYC-Mayor: Marist’s newest survey is almost identical to their last, with Bloombo leading Weiner 50-36 and Thompson 51-33. Weiner really needs to outright declare that he’s not running for Thompson to have any shot, but just the other day he said the mayor’s attacks on him have made him “more inclined to run.” Guys, the election is just six months away. Quit wasting time.
• OK-Gov: Two polls for ya here. First, a company called SoonerPoll pushed out a GOP primary survey with a sample size of just 139. That’s an MoE over eight. Try again, folks. FWIW, it had Mary Fallin leading JC Watts 45-28. Perhaps to counter this news, a Republican company called Wilson Research Strategies released a poll showing Watts up 39-36. This one at least had a respectable n of 500, though it seems no one (including Wilson) has explained who paid for this poll.
UPDATE: Chris Wilson of Wilson Research writes in:
To follow up on your post regarding who paid for our poll, I did. We had another survey in the field and I paid to add the GOP primary questions on there simply for the purposes of interest.
I’m LOVING all of these new catch up news dump threads. You guys just made this blog even more kick ass. We discuss so much more and it’s pretty awesome.
A little stale and a few of the numbers are a little suspect, but interesting if for no other reason but the lack of public polling coming out of her.
Rasmussen Reports (5/6, likely voters):
Obama Job Approval:
49-51 approvals in Arizona isn’t implausible, but the red flag here is the 0% on not sure. They must have really pushed leaners or something.
Gov. Brewer Job Approval:
+7 approvals were better than I expected (and better than a lot of governors right now), but the bad news for her is the paltry 7% strongly approving rating. Again, it seems a little odd that only 4% of the electorate doesn’t have an opinion of her seeing as she’s only ever been on the statewide ballot in unheralded SOS races. A fair amount of that 44% may be pretty ambivalent about her. Some potential match-ups or reelect numbers would be nice.
They also ask some questions about McCain, but they’re not that interesting (i.e. “How likely is it that John McCain will win the Republican Senate Primary in 2010.” as opposed to a useful question, like reelect numbers). However, his favorable rating (not to be confused with job approvals) are still a pretty healthy 65-35 (yet again, 0% of the electorate not sure, which still seems weird).
Well, actually a poll. From Democracy Corps, via Taegan.
Missouri Senate 2010
Robin Carnahan (D) 53%
Roy Blunt (R) 44%
Robin Carnahan (D) 54%
Sarah Steelman (R) 42%
Leans D.
http://www.democracycorps.com/…