Muhlenberg (pdf): for Allentown Morning Call (10/16-19, likely voters, 9/28-10/4 in parens):
Joe Sestak (D): 44 (38)
Pat Toomey (R): 41 (45)
Undecided: 15 (14)Dan Onorato (D): 40 (37)
Tom Corbett (R): 47 (47)
Undecided: 14 (16)
(MoE: ±5%)
As you probably recall, yesterday PPP came out with a poll giving Joe Sestak a one-point lead over Pat Toomey, in marked contrast to, well, everyone else; at that point, it was too early to declare “game changer” without confirmation from someone else. Well, we didn’t have to wait very long at all: Muhlenberg is out with the first installment in what will be a daily tracker until the election, and it has Sestak leading by 3. (Which leads to the question: most effective poop-themed ad ever?) Remember that Muhlenberg’s tracker during the primary steadily showed Sestak emerging into view and overtaking Arlen Specter at the end. It looks like we’re seeing something remarkably similar.
Impressively, it’s still a pretty GOP-friendly sample, with respondents identifying as 46% Dem, 46% GOP, 8% indie (in a state with a sizable Dem registration advantage), and with 42/51 Barack Obama approvals. The gubernatorial race also shows some improvement, though not enough to cause anyone to rethink that race the way we’ll have to regarding the Senate race. Also importantly, there’s significant tightening on the House generic ballot in Pennsylvania: 44-39 for the GOP, down from 48-36 several weeks ago. If that keeps up, that probably makes the difference in terms of several House seats, in a state where we could potentially lose five or more.
Approvals for Obama seem about right, considering his national approval rating in about 46-51, and he won PA by a slightly larger margin than he won nationwide. So by purely logical rights it should be higher there, but it’s obviously not, still I never bought those polls that showed enormous disapproval ratings for Obama in PA.
As for the registration, if Muhlenberg pressures people into a party identification, to get rid of the faux self-labeled indy voters that normally support one party or another, that seems a very accurate representation of PA’s electorate.
pollster has sestak at an average of 42, counting the two polls from yesterday. is what we’re seeing solid movement towars sestak (as suggested by the indies rushing to him) or is it merely indies and conservadems giving him one more kick of the tires. sorry to be a wet blanket on this, i’m hoping he wins too, but i don’t think we should get TOO ahead of ourselves.
http://politics.blogs.foxnews….
It’s strange that the sample voted for McCain 49 to 43 but still Sestak leading. Its also weird that about 30% of the sample has a neutral opinion of Sestak and Toomey.
will go a long way in this race I think.
I’m not surprised that McCain voters are voting Sestak, both because Sestak is military and might be getting that demo of McCain voters, but also Toomey lost the GOP primary in 2004 and was considered far right. He tried to moderate himself this campaign, but his past quotes are coming back to haunt him and are appearing in Sestak attack ads.
GOP request advantage in PA is 8 points compared to their 1 point lead in 2006 and 4 points in 2008. Obviously that doesn’t matter too much if Sesak takes a good proportion of those Republicans.
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/ey…
pulling out or scaling back in some of districts, what can we make of this? Kathy Dahlkemper in PA-03 has been written off for at least a week, and while that sucks, that’s merely one in what is bound to be a loss of at least 25 seats. What about the others? It’s hard to think that sufficient tightening is occuring for the DCCC to drop out or scale back. Are any of these candidates wealthy enough to drop money into their own campaigns? What else could be happening?
Also, does anyone know anything about Sestak’s ground game? You’d have to imagine that there’s been at least some help from Obama for America, unions, and the state party, but what does that mean? If it’s strong, it could make the difference in several House races, as Crisitunity said, and thus in holding the House.
This may be old news by now, I don’t know. But it’s a DSCC poll conducted Sunday and Monday showing…
Jack Conway 49%
Rand Paul 47%
http://voices.washingtonpost.c…
Sestak brought up Palin and O’Donnell several times during last night’s debate, and those two characters are clearly unpopular in Pennsylvania. But it was more revealing that Toomey never mentioned Obama at all! Not once. Does anyone believe that if Obama’s approvals were as far in the toilet as polling suggests (40-51 in latest Quinnipiac) that Toomey would shy away from this angle?
My guess is that Obama is only slightly below parity in Pennsylvania, and that Toomey does not want to wake up hardcore Obama supporters.