Tag: Research 2000

With the outsider and/or netroots candidates (I threw in the “and/or” because Jack Conway doesn’t really fit the “outsider” tag) having overperformed polling expectations in basically all the major primaries (Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and both sides in Kentucky), I thought it would be worth a quick look at what pollsters came closest to getting it right before Tuesday.

• Arkansas: The two polls in the two weeks, from R2K and Mason-Dixon before the primary both gave Blanche Lincoln a lead in the 10-ish ballpark, quite different from her 45-42 finish. The closest prediction came from back in mid-April, in the TalkBusiness poll (conducted by Zeta|3), which gave Lincoln a 7-point lead (38-31) and was also the only pollster to see D.C. Morrison breaking into the double digits (at 10 — he ended up at 13).

• Kentucky (D): The night’s closest result, a 44-43 win for Jack Conway, has to be seen as a surprise: no public pollster had given Conway a lead over Dan Mongiardo since PPP back in December. (A Conway internal in early May gave himself a 4-point lead.) Honors in this category probably go to SurveyUSA, who one week before the primary foresaw a dead heat, in the form of a 38-37 Mongiardo lead.

• Kentucky (R): The 59-35 Randslide was a bigger Paul edge than most pollsters saw, although if you follow the trendlines, there was a pretty clear break for Paul among undecideds at the end that put him on a trajectory for 59. The three last pollsters to hit this race all caught that trend: SurveyUSA on the 9th-11th saw it at 49-33, and PPP and Magellan on the 15th-16th saw 52-34 and 55-30 respectively. I’ll give Republican firm Magellan the nod, for almost nailing the margin.

• Pennsylvania: As I’d expected, Pennsylvania’s primary saw the incumbent rule making a comeback, as most undecideds broke Joe Sestak’s way for a 54-46 victory over Arlen Specter (the Pollster aggregate going in was 43-all). With most pollsters projecting a dead heat, I was a little skeptical at the time of Suffolk’s one-week-out prediction of a 9-point margin (49-40), but that turned out very close to the actual margin.

• PA-12: There’s not much polling data to compare here (Pollster doesn’t have an aggregate), but two of the pollsters that we tend to like, PPP and R2K, both whiffed, predicting a narrow Tim Burns victory (rather than the actual 53-45 Mark Critz win). The winner here is the Global Strategy Group poll that came straight from the Critz camp, accurately prediciting an 8-point spread (44-36); the best public poll came from, of all places, Susquehanna (a Pennsylvania-based Republican pollster, although working for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review rather than Burns here), whose last poll of the race gave a 44-38 edge to Critz.

While we’re talking about the 12th, how did we at SSP do? We had a sophisticated model running behind the scenes helping us with our projections as the night progressed, and our numbers guru jeffmd shares his assessment:

The model (in my not-so-unbiased opinion) did decently well, but as with these types of models, suffers from the all-too-tenuous uniform swing assumption. Uniform swing was clearly not out in force today, considering, for example, a 6.63% Critz overperformance in Cambria County (Critz’s base) and a 5.83% underperformance in Washington County (Burns’ home base). Variability in precinct size is also an issue. In terms of predicting percentages, the model got pretty close with about 1/3 of precincts in (see graph below), but in terms of raw votes, the model seemed to underestimate the number of votes cast (second graph). For what it’s worth, this is a problem also present in the Coakley-Brown model. Regardless, it’s something SSP Labs will continue to refine moving forward.

AR-Sen: Democracy For America is out with a new poll that they commissioned from Research 2000 on the Democratic primary runoff, and it finds Halter ahead of Lincoln by 48-46. A couple of caveats, though: the runoff top lines are buried under a series of issues-related questions, which could suggest that the runoff was tested later in the question order; also, keep in mind that this was a snap overnight poll with no callbacks instead of their usual method. We’ll probably be seeing plenty of polling out of Arkansas over the next three weeks, so I wouldn’t get too excited about a quickie poll like this one.

Meanwhile, Lincoln still has a pretty powerful weapon in her arsenal — the unqualified support of Bill Clinton. Clinton will campaign with Lincoln in Little Rock on May 28.

CT-Sen: Markos does a very thorough job rounding up the independent push-back against the New York Times’ over-the-top hit pieces against Democrat Richard Blumenthal.

FL-Sen: Here’s an amusing slice of parochialism. NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a famous independent, is refusing to endorse Charlie Crist’s Senate candidacy because Crist vetoed a controversial teacher “merit pay” bill passed by the Florida state legislature.

KY-Sen: After initially vowing to seek a recanvass of the statewide vote, Democrat Dan Mongiardo has instead elected to concede the race to AG Jack Conway.

Meanwhile, Rand Paul says that he now plans to be “best friends” with Mitch McConnell — a dude whom he shared tense relations with during the primary season. The bigger story for Paul right now, though, seems to be the national attention that some of his uncompromising views are receiving. Think Progress takes a look at Paul’s reservations with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, specifically the idea that private businesses can’t be as racist as they want to be. (The original source of that nugget, a Louisville Courier-Journal editorial interview, offers a pretty damning assessment of Paul: “The trouble with Dr. Paul is that despite his independent thinking, much of what he stands for is repulsive to people in the mainstream.”)

PA-Gov: How’s this for some thin-skinned bullshit? Republican Attorney General (and gubernatorial nominee) Tom Corbett is subpoenaing Twitter to provide “any and all subscriber information” on two user accounts who have been anonymously criticizing Corbett in missives under 140 characters long. Corbett is apparently going after these two users for their “violations of the laws of Pennsylvania” — whatever that means. It sure doesn’t look like an abuse of office for a politician to use the justice system to silence his critics, does it?

ID-01: Moose Lady to the rescue! Sarah Palin is returning to Idaho on Friday to help pump up the flagging candidacy of Vaughn Ward, whose bid for Congress hit a few snags recently, including allegations that he’s actually a closeted Democrat.

IN-03: Were you wondering how disgraced GOP Rep. Mark Souder got dimed out of office? Souder’s colleague in the Indiana delegation, fellow Republican Mike Pence, effectively claimed his scalp yesterday, saying that he directed the House Ethics Committee to the attention of Souder’s philandering ways. That’s some stone cold shit right there!

NY-14: Lake Research for Carolyn Maloney (5/10-12, likely voters):

Carolyn Maloney (D-inc): 75

Reshma Saujani (D): 7

Undecided: 17

(MoE: ±4.9%)

PA-06: We missed this in yesterday’s round-up, but Doug Pike has conceded the Democratic nod to take on Rep. Jim Gerlach to Manan Trivedi. Pike also issued an unqualified endorsement of Trivedi for the general election.

SC-05: Veteran Dem Rep. John Spratt is hitting back hard against recent NRCC attacks that have attempted to label Spratt as an “amnesiac” with a faulty memory. Spratt, who recently disclosed that he has been diagnosed with early-stage Parkinson’s disease, is calling the NRCC’s missives an attempt to sow doubt about his health, which he calls “beneath contempt”. Even Spratt’s Republican foe in the race, state Sen. Mick Mulvaney, attempted to put some daylight between himself and the NRCC.

VA-05: Feda Kidd Morton, a favorite of the teabagger scene, is in a bit of hot water for an opinion piece she wrote for a local newspaper back in February that turned out to be heavily cribbed from an article written by syndicated conservative columnist Joseph Sobran. In response, Morton says she did no wrong because, “restating principles of the Constitution is no different than restating the Ten Commandments.” Yuh huh. And if you are a Scottish Lord, then I am Mickey Mouse.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (5/10-12, likely voters, 3/8-10 in parens):

Joe Sestak (D): 45 (32)

Arlen Specter (D-inc): 43 (51)

Undecided: 12 (17)

^{(MoE: ±5%)}

Joe Sestak (D): 40 (39)

Pat Toomey (R): 45 (42)

Undecided: 15 (19)

Arlen Specter (D-inc): 41 (47)

Pat Toomey (R): 49 (41)

Undecided: 10 (12)

^{(MoE: ±4%)}

Research 2000 is the most recent pollster to find a small edge for Joe Sestak over Arlen Specter in the May 18 Democratic Senate primary, and also to find Sestak overperforming Specter versus Toomey in the general election. They also find Sestak with by far the most upside of any of the three candidates: Specter’s favorables are at 45/44 with 11% no opinion, Toomey’s are 45/40 with 15% no opinion, and Sestak’s are 39/26 with 35% no opinion.

Muhlenberg College for Allentown Morning Call (pdf) (5/10-13, likely voters, 5/9-12 in parentheses):

Arlen Specter (D-inc): 45 (44)

Joe Sestak (D): 43 (44)

Undecided: 12 (12)

Dan Onorato (D): 39 (39)

Anthony Williams (D): 14 (14)

Joe Hoeffel (D): 11 (11)

Jack Wagner (D): 11 (9)

Undecided: 25 (27)

^{(MoE: ±5%)}

Muhlenberg finds things going the other direction, with a move from a tie in its daily tracker to a 2-point lead for Specter. They also find almost no movement in the gubernatorial primary, with Dan Onorato still in a dominant position.

• AK-Sen: Moose man endorses Some Dude. That’s SSP shorthand for: Todd Palin just endorsed Joe Miller, the right-wing lawyer who’s taking on Lisa Murkowski in the Republican Senate primary. Recall that Mr. Palin has had some fairly fringey politics in the past (as with his membership in the Alaskan Independence Party), so I wonder if this was done with his wife’s approval (or, given her busy schedule these days, whether he was even able to block out some time with her to get her say-so). Given her rumored brief interest in taking on Murkowski in the primary herself (back when she was still Governor rather than itinerant book-selling motivational-speaking grifter), and her long-standing beef with all things Murkowksi, I’d suppose yes.

• CA-Sen: Carly Fiorina, trying to make up last-minute ground in the GOP primary against Tom Campbell, has thrown $1.1 million of her own money into her campaign. On top of previous loans to her campaign, that brings her total self-contributions to $3.6 million. Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner were both heard scoffing loudly.

• CT-Sen: Chalk this one up to bad, bad timing. Linda McMahon just sent out a mailer proposing to “put Connecticut back to work” by “increasing offshore drilling and production” (um, in Long Island Sound?). The mailer features a large, lovely picture of a (non-burning) offshore oil rig.

• NH-Sen: Has Kelly Ayotte just given up on any pretense of trying to look moderate? She’s appearing at a Susan B. Anthony List (the anti-abortion group) fundraiser today, headlined by Sarah Palin, along with a supporting cast like Rep. Steve King. I know that she still needs to survive her GOP primary, but her main opposition these days is looking like moderate Bill Binnie, not right-wing Ovide Lamontagne.

• NV-Sen: Steve Kornacki looks at the Nevada Senate race and the “what if” scenario if Sharron Angle somehow wins the primary. History indicates that Harry Reid can’t pin too many hopes on winning just because the GOP puts forth its most extreme candidate… maybe the biggest case in point, the Carter camp’s hopes that wacko Ronald Reagan would make it out of the GOP primary in 1980.

• NY-Sen: Wow, there’s actually going to be a GOP primary for the right to get mulched by Chuck Schumer! Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos, who’s only been on the job half a year, is already looking to move up. He’ll still have to get past political consultant Jay Townsend in the primary.

• UT-Sen: She stopped short of a formal endorsement, but fringey activist Cherilyn Eagar, who finished fourth at the GOP convention, said that Tim Bridgewater would be “an excellent senator” and complimented him on a “clean, honest race.” Eagar is back to her day job fighting the menace posed by gnomes.

• AL-Gov: I’m losing track of all the weird outside groups popping up to play dirty pool in the Alabama governor’s race. Today’s entrant is the mysterious New Sons of Liberty, whose main agenda seems to be Barack Obama’s birth certificate. They’ve reserved $1.1 million in TV airtime, although it’s unclear what they’ll be advertising about or on behalf of whom. The leader of a group, Basics Project, affiliated with the New Sons is mystified at where they would have gotten that kind of money, so it seems like they’re being used as a conduit for… well, somebody.

There’s also a new poll out of the Republican primary, by Republican pollster Baselice (on behalf of local PR firm Public Strategy Associates… there’s no word on whether any of the candidates are their client). They find Bradley Byrne barely leading Tim James 24-23. Roy Moore, who many thought would be the man to beat, is lagging at 18, with Robert Bentley at 12 and Bill Johnson at 2. The juicier numbers might be down in the AG race, where GOP incumbent Troy King is in all kinds of trouble. He’s losing 50-25 to challenger Luther Strange. There are three Dems in the AG field, most prominently James Anderson, ready to try to exploit the cat-fud fight.

• AR-Gov: One thing we didn’t mention in our writeup of Research 2000’s AR-Sen poll from yesterday is that they were the first pollster to throw the Arkansas Governor’s race into the mix. Incumbent Dem Mike Beebe routinely sports some of the highest favorables of any politician (64/24 here), and he seems immune from Arkansas’ reddish trend and the nation’s overall anti-incumbent fervor. He leads Republican former state Sen. Jim Keet, 62-19.

• CT-Gov: Former Stamford mayor Dan Malloy picked up another potentially useful endorsement today as we make our way toward Connecticut’s endorsing conventions. He got the nod from Rep. John Larson, the #4 man on the House totem pole. UPDATE: On the GOP side, ex-Rep. Chris Shays has an endorsement of his own: Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele.

• NY-Gov: It’s kind of more meta than we’d like, to report on an announcement about an announcement (about an announcement), but it sounds like we’re getting closer to pinning down a date from Andrew Cuomo. It’s being reported that he’ll announce his gubernatorial candidacy on or around May 25, the start of the state Democratic convention.

• AL-05: Rep. Parker Griffith is already up with a negative ad hitting one of his Republican primary opponents, Madison Co. Commissioner Mo Brooks, calling him a “career politician” and “big spender.” Brooks observed, perhaps correctly (although the Alabama primary is fast approaching), that an incumbent attacking a challenger is a big-time sign of weakness.

• GA-09: Former state Rep. Tom Graves, in the runoff for the special election in this seat against fellow Republican Lee Hawkins, got the endorsement from nearby Rep. Lynn “Uppity” Westmoreland. In a district this red, that may actually be a plus.

• MN-06: An unaffiliated independent, Troy Freihammer, may appear on the ballot, in addition to Independence Party nominee Bob Anderson. He needs 1,000 signatures by month’s end, though, so he may not make that hurdle. Getting him on might be a net plus for the Dems, as his website makes pretty clear he’s a Tenther and he’s only likely to take votes away from Michele Bachmann.

• OR-01: SurveyUSA is way down in the weeds here (although that’s because the poll where they get paid to do so, in this case by local TV affiliate KATU), with a look at the primaries in the 1st. In a four-way field on the GOP side, the NRCC’s preferred candidate, sports-industry consultant Rob Cornilles, leads at 31, beating mortgage broker John Kuzmanich at 19. The other guy whose name you hear in connection with this race, Stephan Brodhead (mostly because he somehow summoned up $298K CoH) is polling at all of 3, probably because his main campaign activity seems to be trolling the online comment sections of local newspapers and people have ascertained thusly that he’s a wackjob. Rep. David Wu is at 75% against token opposition on the Dem side.

• PA-04: What was supposed to be a victory lap for former US Attorney and loyal Bushie Mary Beth Buchanan has turned into a real dogfight with attorney Keith Rothfus, seemingly helped along by her apparent ineptitude at electoral politics. She’s currently drawing fire for a “deceitful” mailer which uses the National Rifle Association logo without its permission. Things have actually been going badly enough on the message-control front that improbable rumors have her dropping out of the race (with days to go), although her camp is saying her “major political announcement” is just a press conference to go on the offensive against Rothfus.

• Census: An interesting article from Stateline looks at what various states are doing to amp up Census participation. The real interest, here, is a neat map they’ve put together rating the states not on their overall participation percentages, but on the overall shifts in participation percentage from 2000 to 2010. Intriguingly, the biggest improvements in participation were clustered in the Deep South (especially North and South Carolina, both of which are on the cusp of adding another seat), while the Mountain West states suffered the most. California also seemed to fall off a bit, as budget limitations kept them from doing much outreach this time around, which could conceivably hurt their hopes of staying at 53 seats.

Research 2000 for The Great Pumpkin (5/10-12, likely voters, 5/2-4 in parens, 3/15-17 in brackets):

Daniel Mongiardo (D): 39 (39) [47]

Jack Conway (D): 36 (32) [31]

Other: 10 (12) [7]

Undecided: 15 (17) [15]

Rand Paul (R): 45 (44) [40]

Trey Grayson (R): 35 (32) [28]

Other: 7 (7) [14]

Undecided: 13 (17) [18]

(MoE: ±5%)

In his post, Markos has trend lines dating back to his last poll of this race, commissioned in March. However, R2K also polled this race just a week ago for a group of local news outlets. I’ve inserted those numbers in parens, and the March numbers in brackets. Between this poll and SurveyUSA‘s latest poll showing Mongiardo only ahead by a single point, I think we can say that Conway is making his move. But will it be enough on Tuesday?

General election nums (March in brackets):

Dan Mongiardo (D): 38 [37]

Rand Paul (R): 43 [46]

Undecided: 19 [17]

Dan Mongiardo (D): 36 [38]

Trey Grayson (R): 42 [43]

Undecided: 22 [19]

Jack Conway (D): 39 [39]

Rand Paul (R): 42 [45]

Undecided: 19 [16]

Jack Conway (D): 35 [36]

Trey Grayson (R): 43 [44]

Undecided: 22 [20]

(MoE: ±4%)

The situation looks mildly better for Democrats against Rand Paul, but a looming weakness remains: both Mongiardo and Conway are fairly beat up, with favorables at 47-42 and 46-44, respectively. Grayson’s at 52-27 and Rand Paul sits at 56-27. Hopefully the Democratic nominee can do a better job exploiting Paul’s weirdo politics than Trey Grayson has been able to do in the Republican primary.

AR-Sen: While offering a commencement address at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Michelle Obama gave a shout-out to all the Democratic bigwigs sharing the dais with her: Gov. Mike Beebe, his wife Ginger, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Sen. Mark Pryor and even state AG Bobby Dustin McDaniel. Everyone, that is, except for Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who was also on stage. Stay classy, Michelle.

KS-Sen: The not-particularly pleasant GOP race to succeed Sam Brownback has gotten even uglier, with Rep. Todd Tiahrt accusing frontrunner Rep. Jerry Moran of pulling “a John Kerry” flip-flop on tax cuts. Moran, leading in the polls, has largely been sticking to a Rose Garden strategy and refusing to respond to Tiahrt’s provocations.

NV-Sen: Sue Lowden’s mom must have taught her as a child that if you pick at a scab repeatedly, it will heal faster. That can be the only explanation for Lowden’s newest TV ad, in which she brings up the damn chicken business yet again!

PA-Sen: Joe Sestak now has a four-point lead over Arlen Specter in Muhlenberg’s tracking poll, 46-42. A day earlier, Sestak took his first-ever lead in public polling in the tracker. Also, here’s a good observation: Specter voted against Elana Kagan when she was nominated to be Solicitor General. Now that it looks like she’s going to be tapped for the Supreme Court, he’ll have to very publicly flip-flop on this one barely a week before the primary.

UT-Sen: As you probably saw by now, longtime Utah Sen. Bob Bennett was denied renomination at the GOP convention this past Saturday. Instead, businessman Tim Bridgewater and attorney Mike Lee will duke it out in a June 22nd primary. Lee seems to be the teabagger fave, as he immediately garnered Jim DeMint’s endorsement once he made it past the third and final round of voting.

Meanwhile, Bennett is still holding out the possibility of waging a write-in campaign – which is not out of the question given that Utahns in general like him a lot more than Republican convention delegates. My understanding, though, is that he could only run as a write-in in the general election, not the primary.

Anyhow, while Bennett’s never self-funded before (so far as I know), he is actually extremely wealthy, with assets potentially in excess of $30 million. If turnout is about 600K voters and a Dem can get a third of that, then Bennett only needs 200K to win a squeaker. On the flipside, John Cornyn is pledging to support the GOP nominee, and in modern times, I think only Strom Thurmond has gotten elected to the Senate via write-in. But nevermind all that – do it, Bob… for America!

FL-Gov: Surely by now you’ve heard about anti-gay activist George Rekers’ European escapades with a young man he hired from a site called Rentboy. If not, read this now. The story just got a lot better, though, with word that Florida AG Bill McCollum once paid Rekers at least $60,000 to serve as an expert witness for the state’s attempt to ban gay adoptions. Rekers’ testimony was rejected by the judge as not credible, and the ban was found unconstitutional. All in a day’s work!

KY-Gov: Kentucky’s gubernatorial seat isn’t up until 2011, but a trio of media outlets commissioned a poll from Research 2000 nonetheless. It finds Gov. Steve Beshear leading House Speaker Greg Stumbo in a hypothetical primary, 55-28. In the general election, it shows Beshear up 44-37 over GOP Ag. Comm’r Richie Farmer. Beshear’s job approval is 46-43 and he has $1.9 million in the bank.

NY-Gov: Ordinarily, you need 25% of the weighted delegate vote at a state convention to qualify for the ballot in New York. But because Steve Levy is not yet a registered Republican, GOP rules require him to get 50%. It sounds, though, like there may be some movement afoot to more or less knock that requirement back down to 25%.

CT-05: Some Dude Kie Westby is dropping out of the crowded GOP race to take on Rep. Chris Murphy. Westby endorsed state Sen. Sam Caligiuri on his way out. Quite a few Republicans remain in this primary.

MD-04: State Del. Herman Taylor says he’s challenging Rep. Donna Edwards in the Democratic primary. It sounds like Taylor might be taking Edwards on from the right, saying she’s “out of touch with the business community” (those are the Maryland Gazette’s words, not necessarily his). Meanwhile, it sure sounds like Edwards herself has gone native: Despite the fact that she owes her seat to a primary challenge, she now says “it would be ‘very hard’ for her to support a primary challenger like herself,” according to The Nation. It never changes.

MI-09: Former state Rep. Rocky Raczkowski put out an internal poll showing him up 26-15 over businessman Paul Welday, with a whole lotta people undecided.

NY-23: Like some kind of Archie Comics love triangle involving Betty, Veronica, and Jughead, newcomer Matt Doheny is wooing the Club for Growth away from their former not-so-golden boy, Doug Hoffman. (The Club now says it’s “hard to say” whom they will endorse, if anyone.) Maybe toss in Moose, too, since the Conservative Party is making it extra-interesting by sticking with Hoffman.

PA-12: This ain’t good news for Team Blue: Dem Mark Critz reported having just $73K in the bank in his pre-election FEC report, while GOPer Tim Burns has $308K. I don’t feel too good about this one.

UT-02: In case you missed it, Dem Rep. Jim Matheson is being forced into his first-ever primary come June 22nd, thanks to the vote taken at the state’s Democratic convention this past weekend. Retired teacher Claudia Wright nabbed 45% of the delegates on Saturday, clearing the 40% hurdle to get her name on the primary ballot. The winner will take on ex-state Rep. Morgan Philpot, who has raised just $27K so far. Wright has raised $9K, while Matheson has taken in a million bucks and has $1.4 mil on hand.

WV-01: I was wondering when this was going to happen: The DCCC has finally sent some help to Rep. Alan Mollohan, who faces a stiff primary challenge from the right in the form of state Sen. Mike Oliverio. The election is tomorrow, though, so I wonder if, Coakley-style, this assistance is going to be too little, too late. While I carry no brief for Mollohan, he is almost certainly better than Oliverio, who is buddy-buddy with the state GOP.

Meanwhile, on the GOP side, the cat fud is flying fast and furious. Attorney Mac Warner says he won’t support ex-state Rep. David McKinley if he wins the nomination, claiming McKinley’s “gone way over the line in personal attacks and distortions of the truth.” (Welcome to politics, bub.) In general, the primary has been very negative, with much of the fire aimed at McKinley.

New Jersey: A New Jersey appellate court dinged Chris Christie’s attempt to unilaterally restrict campaign contributions by unions, saying that legislation would instead be required.

Polling: Tom Jensen, who has penned many dour but accurate notes about the rough shape Dems find themselves in this cycle, draws together some surprising threads and finds recent good polling news for Team Blue in five senate races.

Research 2000 for Markos Moulitsas’ Wonder Emporium (5/3-5, likely voters, 2/22-24):

Alexi Giannoulias (D): 38 (43)

Mark Kirk (R): 41 (36)

Undecided: 19 (19)

Pat Quinn (D-inc): 36 (47)

Bill Brady (R): 39 (32)

Undecided: 25 (20)

Pat Quinn (D-inc): 35

Bill Brady (R): 39

Scott Lee Cohen (I): 3

Undecided: 23

(MoE: ±4%)

Lots of yuck here from Research 2000, who see both Alexi Giannoulias and Pat Quinn’s fortunes slide. In the wake of Giannoulias’ family bank collapsing, his favorables have fallen from 49-34 in February to 38-46. It remains to be seen whether the worst is over in terms of the bad press that has consistently dogged Giannoulias for months like a set of nasty stink lines.

And as for those gubernatorial numbers… well, can anyone think of examples of incumbents who have polled in the 30s and survived in a general election (without a freakish third-party challenger muddying the waters)? Bill Brady may be wildly out of whack with his state, but 2010 could be just the type of year that allows a few nutters like him to slip through the cracks.

• CA-Sen: Hell hath no fury like a teabagger scorned, and now the swarm is turning its anger on the queen bee. Even Sarah Palin’s popularity apparently has limits, as she’s getting all sorts of blowback (at her Facebook page, mostly) from California’s right-wingers upset over her endorsement of corporate GOPer Carly Fiorina instead of true believer Chuck DeVore.

• KY-Sen: Research 2000, on behalf of various local news outlets, polled the primaries in Kentucky, finding, in the Democratic field, Dan Mongiardo leading Jack Conway 39-32 (with 12 opting for one of the three minor candidates). On the GOP side, Rand Paul leads Trey Grayson 44-32. The same poll has perilously low approvals for Majority leader Mitch McConnell, down to 41/49. And guess who’s taking notice? Democratic state Auditor Crit Luallen — one of our commenters, nrimmer, reports that she’s sending out fundraising e-mails raising the possibility of a 2014 challenge.

Dan Mongiardo is also out with an internal poll, in the wake of the Conway camp releasing one with Conway in the lead. Mongo’s poll, taken by Garin Hart Yang, has him up 46-34 (although he can’t be psyched about the trendlines; his internal poll from February had him up 43-25). One other note from this race: an Iowa-based group, American Future Fund, is running an anti-Paul ad on TV. AFF claims to be about “free market views,” so I’m not sure what their beef with Paul is (you don’t get much more free market than that), but at any rate, their ad features a chiming cuckoo clock in it, which nicely underscores Paul’s, um, cuckoo-ness.

• NC-Sen: Third-place finisher Kenneth Lewis finds himself in something of the kingmaker’s seat, after preventing Elaine Marshall or Cal Cunningham from avoiding a runoff in the Democratic primary. Lewis says he’s not sure who he’ll endorse or even if he will endorse, but both camps are, naturally, reaching out to him and his supporters (including Mel Watt and Harvey Gantt).

• PA-Sen/PA-Gov (pdf): There’s clearly a lot of day-to-day volatility in the Muhlenberg/Morning Call daily tracker of the Dem primaries, but you can’t deny this is a blockbuster result: Joe Sestak has drawn even with Arlen Specter for the first time, as they tie at 43-all today. Maybe that ad with all those purdy pictures of him with George Bush and Sarah Palin is having the desired effect? On the gubernatorial side, Dan Onorato is at 35, Joe Hoeffel at 11, Anthony Williams at 10, and Jack Wagner at 8.

• UT-Sen: Tomorrow may well be the end of the line for Bob Bennett, the three-term Senator from Utah. He’s poised to get kicked to the curb at tomorrow’s nominating convention by his state’s far-right activist base for the crime of actually trying to legislate. Bennett’s getting some last-minute hits from robocalls from the Gun Owners of America, but that’s pretty tame compared with some of the other over-the-top attacks being leveled at other candidates (like Mike Lee as Hitler?). Michael Steele, wary of treading on the base’s toes in a no-win situation, has announced his staying neutral in the nominating process.

• MA-Gov: Looks like you don’t want to get on Tim Cahill’s bad side (or maybe more accurately, on the bad side of media consultant John Weaver, who’s also working on the oddball campaigns of Rick Snyder in Michigan and Steve Levy in New York). After a hard hit from the RGA, the Cahill camp retaliated with a web video pegging RGA chair Haley Barbour as a Confederate sympathizer and corrupt lobbyist. The RGA fired back saying the Cahill camp had responded like “scalded apes” (strange metaphor, but it has a certain evocative charm).

• OR-Gov: That SurveyUSA poll that had Republican primary results that was leaked a few days ago is fully available now, and it also contains Democratic primary results. John Kitzhaber seems poised to roll over Bill Bradbury; he leads 54-16. (As reported earlier, Chris Dudley led on the GOP side, although only at 28%.)

• RI-Gov: The DGA is going on the offensive against independent Lincoln Chafee, seeing him (and certainly not Republican John Robitaille) as their main impediment to picking up the governor’s office. They’ve launched an anti-Chafee site… and here’s an indication of the candidates’ positioning in this scrambled race: they’re actually attacking Chafee from the right, focusing on Chafee’s love of taxes.

• HI-01: One candidate who isn’t running away from Barack Obama is Ed Case, who’s up with a new TV ad throwing his arms around the hometown favorite. “Only one candidate is strong enough to stand with the President: Ed Case!” intones the ad. Despite the White House’s behind-the-scenes finger-on-the-scale, though, Obama hasn’t officially come out in favor of Case.

• ID-01: I wonder what think tank the right-wing’s current fixation with the 17th Amendment recently bubbled up from? I thought it was a weird aberration when Steve Stivers started up about it, but now it’s an issue in the GOP primary in the 1st, where all of a sudden the two contestants, Raul Labrador and Vaughn Ward, are trying to out-Seventeenther each other. Has Frank Luntz actually tried running the idea through one of his focus groups of taking away people’s rights to vote for their Senators? Somehow I doubt it polls well.

• WATN?: Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Former Republican state Senate majority leader Joe Bruno just got sentenced to two years in federal prison for fraud and abuse of office. It’s worth noting, though, that the sentence was stayed until the SCOTUS can rule on the “honest services” issue that’s before it, so it could be a long time, if ever, before Bruno’s wearing stripes.

Research 2000 for KCCI-TV (5/3-5, likely voters, 2/15-17 in parens):

IA-Sen:

Roxanne Conlin (D): 40 (35)

Chuck Grassley (R-inc): 49 (56)

Undecided: 11 (9)

(MoE: ±4%)

These are nice numbers for Roxanne Conlin, who is still unknown to 20% of likely vteros. However, R2K’s polling (including their first poll of this race for Daily Kos) has really bounced around a lot. In October of last year, it was Grassley +12, then Grassley +21 in February, and now Grassley +9. I’m not really sure there’s an explanation for this gyration. (And as far as I understand, R2K used the same methodology for both clients – and you can see that the question wording is the same, too.)

IA-Gov:

Chet Culver (D-inc): 41 (38)

Terry Branstad (R): 48 (54)

Undecided: 11 (8)

Chet Culver (D-inc): 44 (41)

Bob van der Plaats (R): 40 (38)

Undecided: 16 (21)

Chet Culver (D-inc): 46 (48)

Rod Roberts (R): 36 (26)

Undecided: 18 (26)

(MoE: ±4%)

Again, a lot of bouncing in the toplines: Branstad +5 to Branstad +16 to Brandstad +7. The latest survey is good news for Culver, sure, but that’s a bit like saying Dukakis did better than Mondale – the numbers still suck.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (5/3-5, likely voters, 3/29-31 in parens):

John McCain (R-inc): 48 (52)

J.D. Hayworth (R): 36 (37)

Other: 6

Undecided: 10 (11)

(MoE: ±5%)

Rodney Glassman (D): 35 (33)

John McCain (R-inc): 48 (52)

Undecided: 17 (15)

Rodney Glassman (D): 42 (37)

J.D. Hayworth (R): 43 (48)

Undecided: 15 (15)

(MoE: ±4%)

All around, you have got to love those weak numbers for Mac The Knife! McCain’s favorables have taken a dip from 47-46 in late March to 43-52 in this poll. What’s especially remarkable about all of these numbers is that, of all the Senate and gubernatorial match-ups, McCain is the only Republican to earn double-digit support from Hispanic voters… and just barely so at a mere 10% of the vote! (Recall that 40% of Arizona Hispanics voted for McCain’s Presidential bid in 2008.)

The gube numbers:

Jan Brewer (R): 32

Buz Mills (R): 14

Dean Martin (R): 13

John Munger (R): 5

Undecided: 36

(MoE: ±5%)

Terry Goddard (D): 48

Jan Brewer (R-inc): 42

Undecided: 10

Terry Goddard (D): 47

Dean Martin (R): 35

Undecided: 18

Terry Goddard (D): 48

Buz Mills (R): 34

Undecided: 18

Terry Goddard (D): 47

John Munger (R): 30

Undecided: 23

Remember when Jan Brewer was considered dead in the water in the Republican primary thanks to her apostasy on taxes? (One Rasmussen poll even had her at 10%!) Looks like that was nothing that some good ol’ fashioned racism couldn’t cure, although she’s still given a big assist from the fractured nature of the Republican primary field… and “Undecided” is currently beating her by four points.

Note that the general election numbers are extremely close to PPP’s take on this race in late April. One difference, though, is that PPP gave Brewer a more favorable performance among Hispanics. In their poll, Goddard was beating her by 71-25 among Hispanic voters, while R2K gives Goddard an even more commanding 74-9 lead in that demographic.