Rasmussen (8/20, likely voters incl. leaners, 7/24 in parens):
Tom Udall (D): 52 (61)
Steve Pearce (R): 44 (35)
(MoE: ±4.0%)
Big surge for Steve Pearce. But how does one spell “outlier”? This race has never been in single digits — with the exception of a lone Rasmussen poll from February. It looks like the “Rasmussen non-bounce” may have struck again.
Has anything changed since July to make this an 8-point race? Pearce has taken to the airwaves in recent weeks, slamming Udall on the energy issue, and the Club For Growth nutters have joined in on the fun. That might be enough to bring Tomnotmark down from the 65% range, but you still have to figure that Udall is in commanding control of this race.
SSP currently rates this race as Likely Democratic.
This poll looks like B.S. to me.
everytime they look bad for us. Looks about right. I knew Pearce would move in once a few million got spent in ads. He’s probably just finally reunited the Republican base after the primary and that’s the reason for the bump. I still don’t see, demographically, how he could win it, he Udall will likely dominate their home districts by massive margins as both lean strongly to their parties and both are very popular there. That leaves it to Albuqurque. With a large minority population, mostly hispanic, a group Pearce will offen with his hardcore immigration stand, and a major University, I don’t see how Udall could lose this district. Kerry won it, Obama’s probably going to win it significantly bigger than Kerry, so…impossible. Pearce is just too conservative to win this state, especially now that it’s trended to a marginally Democratic state in Presidential elections and a fairly strong Democratic state locally and Tom Udall is about as local a politician as you can get, (before he was elected to the U.S. House in 1998 he was a two term Attorney General, and his father was a famous New Mexico Representative, Steward Udall).
….when I saw this poll. My first thought–was this the Presidential poll by mistake? But on further thought, I’m wondering–
a. Pearce has gone up on the air, and Udall hasn’t
b. the energy issue
c. McCain has campaigned a lot in New Mexico lately
d. This was never a 26-point race to begin with
e. All of the above.
My choice is e. I think Udall will still win this, but it’s not going to be a cakewalk. He’d better start campaigning.
was competitive at one time…but….then Mikal Watts and his five million dollars were forced to get out the race for a popular netroots State Rep. who has come and proceedeeeeed tooooooo…not raise shit. You can’t win a huge and expensive state like Texas with one million dollars raised. We should have stayed with Watts.
Texas was disappointing, but that does not mean that Noriega still can’t beat Big Bad John Cornyn.
There was a poll Rasmussen put out on that race a few months ago showing Lunsford up by about 5 points. Noone bought it for a minute and of course every poll since they has had McConnell up by around 7-15 points.
I have always said this race would tighten as it got nearer to November. The 25 point margin was not going to stay, everyone in the state knew that. I’d been hearing that internal polls had it closer than 25 points.
that said, there are several problems with this poll. For one, it’s a single-day poll. A single day when John McCain was in Las Cruces campaigning. Then again, Obama was just in Albuquerque on Monday.
Udall has been hit hard by special interest groups on the radio for weeks and now on TV.
The poll was taken the same time as a Presidential poll that has Obama up six — about what everyone pegs New Mexico as right now.
So I’m of a mixed mind about this poll. If only SurveyUSA hadn’t gone into hibernation and polled this as well for comparison…