SSP Daily Digest: 8/18

• AK-Sen: Joe Miller has two things going for him in the Alaska GOP Senate primary: the endorsements of Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. On the other hand, Lisa Murkowski has the backing of about 1.9 million dead presidents behind her. That’s her cash on hand, based on $300K raised in July and early August. Miller raised only $68K in that span and now has $84K CoH.

• KS-Sen, KS-Gov: SurveyUSA, no stranger to Republican-friendly samples lately, comes up with quite the GOP wipeout in Kansas. They find Republican Rep. Jerry Moran leading Lisa Johnston in the Senate race, 69-23, and find Sam Brownback leading state Sen. Tom Holland in the gubernatorial race, 67-25. They even find several Dem incumbents losing to GOP challengers in downballot races. It may be worth, noting, however, the disparity in self-described ideology between this sample and the 2008 exit polls: this poll is 49 conservative, 37 moderate, 9 liberal, compared with 2008’s 45 moderate, 38 conservative, 16 liberal.

• NV-Sen: With her endorsement percentage starting to trend steeply downward (with last night’s losses by Rita Meyer and Clint Didier), Sarah Palin’s trying out a new angle, literally. She’s backing Sharron Angle in Nevada, saying she’ll “actively help” her and that Angle “is putting up with more crap than she deserves.” Palin avoided getting involved in the primary, probably in large part because of other family members’ support for Danny Tarkanian.

• NY-Sen-B, NY-Gov (pdf): Siena’s out with another look at the big-ticket races in New York, finding the same-old same-old. Kirsten Gillibrand leads Bruce Blakeman 55-28, Joe DioGuardi 54-29, and David Malpass 55-27. DioGuardi is on track to win the GOP Senate primary, leading Blakeman and Malpass 19-8-5. And Andrew Cuomo is even more dominant, leading Rick Lazio 60-26 and Carl Paladino 60-27. Lazio leads Paladino 43-30 in the GOP primary, much closer than previous months. Further down the ballot, they find incumbent Dem comptroller Tom DiNapoli leading Harry Wilson 46-28, and Dems leading a generic ballot-type question about the state legislature, 33-27.

• CO-Gov: Dan Maes picked his running mate: former state Rep. and former Dept. of Regulatory Agencies head Tambor Williams. Williams seems to actually be something of a moderate by today’s GOP standards, which is an interesting act of ticket-balancing by the wackadoodle Maes (although you have to wonder how “moderate” someone willing to be joined at the hip to Maes can be). Meanwhile, Tom Tancredo is focusing most of his fire on Maes, not on John Hickenlooper, attacking Maes’, well, utter lack of qualifications. Tancredo seems to realize that the only path to viability in this election as an indie is reducing Maes to the Alan Schlesinger-style single-digits role. And guess who’s throwing up their hands and walking away? The RGA, which according to several local Republicans, has confirmed it won’t be spending money in Colorado.

• ID-Gov, ID-01: We’ve gotten an inkling that the Idaho gubernatorial race (where GOP incumbent Butch Otter was elected with lackluster numbers in 2006) was possibly a real race, and these poll numbers seem to confirm it. I don’t know whether to call this a Republican poll (it’s taken by a local pollster who usually works for Republicans, Greg Strimple, on behalf of the Idaho Hospital Association) or an independent one, but either way, it’s not good news for the GOP. Otter leads Dem Keith Allred by only 47-36. Also good news: that Raul Labrador internal poll that had him losing by double digits was actually pretty optimistic, on his part. This sample sees Dem Walt Minnick beating Labrador by a startling 52-29 margin. Maybe all that chatter about the NRCC moving to write off this seat has some real roots.

• VT-Gov: Lone Republican Brian Dubie is the fundraising leader in the decidedly small-dollar gubernatorial race in Vermont. Dubie has raised the most over the course of the campaign (slightly more than $1 million). (Maybe if Meg Whitman can’t win in California, she should consider moving to Vermont and buying the gubernatorial race here. In fact, maybe she should just consider buying the entire state of Vermont, which would still be cheaper than buying the gubernatorial race in California.) The Dems are all closely bunched, with Peter Shumlin and Deb Markowitz more or less tied for most raised. But all five major Dems are low on cash, each reporting less than $100K CoH (Matt Dunne has the most, at $83K). For some reason, the article doesn’t tell us Dubie’s CoH.

• GA-08: GOP state Rep. Austin Scott (following hot on the heels of fellow legislator and GA-02 candidate Mike Keown’s internal poll release) is out with an internal showing a competitive race against Rep. Jim Marshall. Marshall leads Scott 44-39 in the poll conducted in late July by American Viewpoint.

• MI-01: This has the potential to mightily reshuffle things in the open seat race in the 1st… or it could turn out to be so much wind in sails, as promises of massive self-funding usually are. Random teabagger and indie candidate Glenn Wilson is promising to spend $2 million of his own money in order to defeat Gary McDowell and Dan Benishek, the Dem and GOP nominees. In this rural seat with dirt-cheap media markets, that could go a long way toward blanketing the airwaves… but without the organizational backing that the party apparatuses provide, that seems like it still might not translate into actual votes.

• TN-08: Humble farmer/gospel singer and, in his spare time, director of Fight Club, Stephen Fincher is out with an internal poll from the Tarrance Group that gives him a lead over Democratic state Sen. Roy Herron in this open seat race. He claims a 47-37 lead, with conservative indie Donn James at 5, in a poll taken immediately post-primary. Herron, who avoided much trouble in the primary and was able to bank a lot of money, is already hitting Fincher with TV ads, though.

• RGA: One nice thing about the post-Citizens United universe is that it lets us see everything in the open that we’ve only just suspected in the past. Case in point: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (the Fox News and WSJ parent corporation) just gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association. Insert obvious snarky comment about “Fair and Balanced” here.

• Rasmussen:

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway (D) 40%, Rand Paul (R) 49%

• NV-Sen: Harry Reid (D-inc) 47%, Sharron Angle (R) 47%

• OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D-inc) 40%, John Kasich (R) 48%

• PA-Gov: Dan Onorato (D) 38%, Tom Corbett (R) 48%

112 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 8/18”

  2. I usually don’t read online newspaper comments due to the fact that they’re likely spammers from freerepublic and such, but these ones appear legit and show why Otter and Labrador aren’t doing too well.

    Is Labrador completely unable to discuss anything without mentioning Obama, Pelosi or Reid? For goodness sake, come up with some new talking points! I am sick and tired of hearing about Pelosi. I want to hear what Labrador has to say about anything he proposes, believes in…anything but this constant scat about Pelosi!

    GOP doesn’t even seem to know where they are

    I just got a letter from the Ada County Republicans asking me to sponsor their “Harvest Roundup”…complete with photos of John Wayne and “The Rifelman” and passages about our “God given inalienable rights” and how they need “patriots like you” to “Take Back America”.

    The return address on the envelope was 1234 Main Street, Anytown, USA 99222. What the…? Perhaps with all their focus on Obama, Reid and Pelosi, they have forgotten about Idaho? I think Otter and Labrador are both suffering from a lack of focus from the GOP and the influence of fringe elements in the party. They need to get back to basics and stop with all this nonsense.

    Just another example of how Otter has abandoned Idaho to concentrate on the national issues over which he has one voice just like the rest of us. He’s lost touch with Idaho citizens who are neither GOP nor Dems but independent voters concerned about Idaho issues not national issues. We need solutions not GOP rhetoric to the problems facing every day Idaho citizens.

    Tip O’Neill continues to be right about how “All politics is local.”  Similar to PA-12, people could care less about Pelosi in this economy.  They just want to know what Labrador stands for, not what he’s against.

  3. This one hits her for justifying the privatization of Social Security by saying: “I’ve been studying.  Chile has done this.”  What she didn’t know that it was instituted in 1981 under Pinochet and was such a bad system, not even Pinochet’s army opted to partake in it.

    What do you think of this?

  4. I’m calling shenanigans on the SUSA poll. That sample is all kinds of whack. This number jumped out at me even more than the conservative/moderate/liberal split: look at Kansans’ supposed views of the Tea Party.

    A whopping 48% of Kansans like the Tea Party? Just 22% of Kansans don’t like the people calling the President Hitler? Okaaaay.

    More fun with those crosstabs: apparently, Sam Brownback is going to win a quarter of the Democratic vote. Kansas Democrats, who, being a relatively small part of the KS electorate are much further left of center relative to the state than they are elsewhere….and a hardcore conservative like Brownback gets a quarter of them? No. Just no. Meanwhile, only 6% of Republicans are jumping ship from the crazy-eyed conservative candidate? You’ve gotta be friggin’ kidding me. Oh–and once again, SUSA “proves” that young people hate Democrats.

    I’m sorry, I know everyone says SUSA is a good pollster. Their toplines are accurate, yada yada. But how exactly (other than blind luck) do you get accurate toplines when your samples are just off the wall?

  5. As a 527 involved in state elections, RGA (and DGA) always could and did take direct corporate contributions.

  8. If Rasmussen has it at 48-38 Corbett, I’m ecstatic.  Whether this is true or biased, its still within the margin that will be needed to save house seats and possibly help Sestak.  I’d have thought Corbett would be up much, much more to be honest.

  10. This may be something, or this may be nothing. Former WWE Wrestler Lance Cade died last week of heart failure, attributed to what most people think was an addiction to steroids and/or pain meds.

    http://pwtorch.com/artman2/pub…

    Unfortunately, wrestling sites don’t offer a full breakdown of the comments, but this is the most complete one I could find. McMahon says she “may have met him (Cade) once”, but doesn’t think the WWE is responsible for the death of the wrestler. For what it’s worth, I’m seeing a lot of people in the wrestling world turning on McMahon, and you would think that would be her biggest base.

  11. What was up with Rasmussen publishing alternative polls with leaners included? With leaners, Sharron Angle beats Reid by 2 points, while John Kasich leads in Ohio against Strickland by 10!

  13. The Jackson Sun put Fincher’s internal on the front page as a lead story beneath the fold. Do other city papers do this? It seems to cross the line of objective reporting, but perhaps this is becoming acceptable in modern political reporting in the newspaper industry? I have seen papers report internals within a larger story, but never as the story.  

  15. Yesterday you mentioned Lincoln Almonds as a possible appointment to the Senate if Chafee wins, and Reed is appointed Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State. I found another reason (probably one you already knew, just didn’t think important) that would make that seem like a likely choice: Almonds appointed Chafee to the Senate. I wonder if that would be the first time where a Senator who was appointed to the sen appointed the gov who appointed him to the sen.  

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