Research 2000 for Daily Kos (10/27-29, likely voters, 10/14-16):
Gary Trauner (D): 45 (44)
Cynthia Lummis (R): 49 (43)
(MoE: ±4.5%)
This is a race that looks great on paper: Gary Trauner (who almost beat Barbara Cubin last time, helping prompt her retirement this year) is a known quantity in Wyoming, who’s been running mostly even in the polls with Cynthia Lummis, and now he’s getting a good amount of DCCC IEs to go with his netroots money, enough to recently boost this race to Lean Republican. However, we might be seeing a bit of what we’ve been worried about here at SSP: previously high numbers of undecided Republicans, who seem to be coming home to the GOP in the closing moments of the campaign. If 2006 is any indication, though, Trauner is good at overperforming the polls.
McCain is up 61-36 in Wyoming. There are two senate races, both safe GOP: Barasso leads Carter 60-35 and Enzi leads Rothfuss 62-35.
Republicans were eventually going to start coming home here, just like I expect Democrats have started coming home in PA-11.
As Kos noted, GOPers went from 65-14 two weeks ago to 72-21 today, so the undecided who decided split evenly. The problem is independents, which Gary won 71-29 in 2006, and is now winning just 53-41. He has to put up a bigger margin with them to win here. Unfortunately, Lummis is not (yet) as hated as Barbara Cubin.
One other issue, this one might play into Gary’s favor: this poll does not include the libertarian candidate. In 2006, the libertarian got 4 percent and I think he will get this number again Tuesday. These are voters that could come out of Lummis’ pocket, most likely.
But as Andy notes, Trauner needs to do better with indies. But that current margin is too small for that indie margin, isn’t it? In which case, that might mean he’s overperforming 2006 among either Dems or Repubs (or both).
We don’t have any Democrats representing a district that Republican. We have two representing R+17 districts, and one of those (Lampson) may be in trouble.
Gary’s a great candidate, but the deck is stacked against him here and Obama does not have coat-tails in this state.
The DCCC has put money into several districts that are more than R+10, and I expect us to lose all of them (except maybe OH-02).
Again I regret that we’ve seen no independent expenditures in D+0 IA-04, where Obama will have big coat-tails.
and I can’t decide which way to call it. I’m leaning towards calling it for Lummis beacuse of the Republican lean but Trauner outperforms polls and might pull off a upset so I’m not quite sure.
Gov. Dave is term-limited, so the seat is open, and if he does lose, I have to believe it will be very tight again. With that in mind, I think he would be a strong contender for governor as Wyomingites have had no problem sending Democrats to Cheyenne. But does anyone think he might be ridiculed and pushed down a peg with back-to-back losses on his resume?