Tag: Polls

SurveyUSA (10/27-28, likely voters, 10/13-14 in parens):

Kurt Schrader (D): 55 (51)

Mike Erickson (R): 31 (38)

(MoE: ±3.9%)

When Darlene Hooley retired, this open seat race in a D+1 district with a GOP registration edge was supposed to be a barnburner. It was… if by ‘barnburner,’ you mean Mike Erickson pouring gasoline all over his own barn and setting it on fire.

While the Democrats fielded one of their strongest possible candidates, Erickson has endured one PR disaster after another, all while watching the district’s GOP registration advantage disappear. Now he’s left watching the continually rising Obama and Merkley wave lift Schrader higher along with them, too. Oh well… he’ll always have Havana.

SurveyUSA (10/27-28, likely voters, 10/13-14 in parens):

Kay Barnes (D): 36 (40)

Sam Graves (R-inc): 54 (51)

Dave Browning (L): 5 (4)

(MoE: ±4%)

Kay Barnes, the former mayor of Kansas City, was one of the first top-tier recruits by the DCCC in 2007, so this is a genuinely painful polling result to see. I’ve heard whispers in recent days about internal polling also saying that this race has slipped away, and indeed, the DCCC hasn’t made any significant expenditures here in nearly two weeks (although the NRCC is continuing to pour it on, so at least Barnes is doing other candidates a favor by drawing some enemy fire).

Tough breaks — but perhaps this should serve as a reminder for next Tuesday that we can’t win ’em all.

SurveyUSA for Roll Call (10/27-28, likely voters, 10/15-16 in parens):

David Boswell (D): 43 (42)

Brett Guthrie (R): 53 (51)

Undecided: 4 (7)

(MoE: ±4%)

My friends, this does not look good. National money has been pouring into the district at a furious clip in recent weeks, and it doesn’t seem to have done Boswell much good (remember, back when this race was not engaged, Boswell lead by 3 points in late June). A recent DCCC poll may say otherwise, but it’s getting hard to ignore this string of consistently disappointing SurveyUSA polls.

Bonus finding: McCain leads Obama by 62-35 in this district. More details on the poll’s internals are available here (pdf).

Rasmussen (10/28, likely voters, 10/22 in parens):

Al Franken (DFL): 39 (41)

Norm Coleman (R-inc): 43 (37)

Dean Barkley (I): 14 (17)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

So where did Coleman get all this mojo from? Rasmussen speculates that a strong recent debate performance, coupled with the Strib’s endorsement, has given the incumbent the upper hand.

Rasmussen isn’t my favorite pollster (although I do appreciate just how damned prolific they are), so I’d like to see what the other polling orgs have to say about the state of this race. In any case, this still feels very much like a tossup.

The latest AP-GfK Battleground State Poll also includes numbers from four Senate contests (10/22-26, likely voters), and the numbers are looking pretty good all-around for the Democrats:

• CO-Sen: Udall 48%, Schaffer 36%
• NH-Sen: Shaheen 47%, Sununu 41%
• NC-Sen: Hagan 47%, Dole 43%
• VA-Sen: Warner 58%, Gilmore 32%

(Hat-tip to reader AT)

Research 2000 for WCAX-TV (10/24-26, likely voters, 9/11-14 in parens):

Gaye Symington (D): 24 (33)

Jim Douglas (R-inc): 47 (48)

Anthony Pollina (I): 23 (7)

(n = 400)

I was just going to pop this into Quick Hits, seeing as how off-the-radar the Vermont gubernatorial race is, but this is such a complicated situation that it needs some extended explanation. Jim Douglas, a very moderate Republican, has been governor of Vermont for six years, since Howard Dean left office. Vermont is one of only two states (with New Hampshire) that elects a governor every two years… and Vermont is alone in its other weird quirk: if no one gets over 50%, the race gets thrown into the state legislature. In fact, that’s how Douglas got into office in 2002: he won 45-42, with 13 going to third parties.

We may be looking at the same scenario this year; there have been few polls of this race, but they all place Douglas slightly below 50. Like 2002, there’s a strong third-party presence this year, this time in the form of Anthony Pollina, who has run for statewide office several times on the Progressive Party line (although this time he’s running as an independent).

Pollina has secured a number of endorsements (AFL-CIO, Vermont Education Association) that normally go to Democrats, and Vermont House Speaker Gaye Symington has stumbled in public appearances, which explains Pollina’s surge in the polls; if his trajectory continues, he’ll wind up finishing second.

So what happens if this winds up in the hands of the legislature? Last time in 2002, the legislature installed Douglas, who got the plurality of voters. They’re under no obligation to do so, though, and the Vermont legislature is now more thoroughly Democratically-controlled than 2002 (93-49-8 in the House, and 23-7 in the Senate)… so it’s possible that even if Douglas wins the plurality (as he certainly looks likely to do), he might not get chosen based on a partisan vote. But if Symington finishes third, could the legislative Dems bring themselves to install her? Could Pollina play kingmaker by throwing his support… or could he even wind up as the dark-horse pick? This one will be interesting to watch.

UPDATE: Although the possibility of someone other than Douglas winning at the ballot box is nil, the possibility of a non-Douglas outcome at the legislative level has encouraged us to move this race to “Likely Republican.”

Rasmussen (10/28, likely voters, 10/6 in parens):

Mark Begich (D): 52 (48)

Ted Stevens (R-inc): 44 (49)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

Here it is: the first post-conviction poll of Alaska shows Stevens trailing Begich by 8 points. It’s a testament to Stevens’ strong popularity (and the redness of Alaska) that a man on his way to jail is still taking a share of the vote that large.

SurveyUSA (10/26-27, likely voters, 10/6-7 in parens):

Ashwin Madia (D): 44 (46)

Erik Paulsen (R-inc): 45 (43)

Other: 9 (n/a)

(MoE: ±3.9%)

Paulsen takes the slimmest of leads in SurveyUSA’s latest Minnesota poll. This seems to run counter to the general sense that Madia has been pulling away from Paulsen in recent days. Of course, like a lot of SUSA polls from Minnesota, there are weird things at work in the crosstabs. For instance, Paulsen takes a 44-41 lead among 18 to 34 year-olds (a group where Madia had held a 52-42 lead earlier in the month).

It seems that the kids just can’t get enough of the GOP in Minnesota — the kids who are square enough to answer their landline and talk to a robot pollster, at least.

SUSA has produced some pretty favorable polls for Republicans this year in Minnesota in both the Presidential and Senate contests, so I’ll take this one with a grain of salt.

SurveyUSA (10/26-27, likely voters, 10/12-13 in parentheses):

Chris Gregoire (D-inc): 50 (48)

Dino Rossi (Prefers GOP Party): 48 (47)

(MoE: ±4%)

Yesterday I commented, in relation to the UW poll that gave Chris Gregoire a 6-point edge, that national pollsters insist on seeing this as a 1-2 point game, but local pollsters see a wider spread. Well, like clockwork, SurveyUSA rolled in today with a 50-48 spread (in fact, the third time they’ve come up with a 50-48 tally).

This poll is interesting for one reason, though: SurveyUSA this time asked the ‘already voted’ question. 54% of the respondents have already voted, and of them, they’re going for Gregoire at a 53-46 ratio (with 1% undecided!). The remaining likely voters are breaking for Rossi 50-47, but as you can see from the topline, there just aren’t enough of them to win it for him. One other crosstab that I found nice to see: self-described moderates go for Gregoire 57-42, meaning they aren’t buying Rossi’s innocuous sales patter. (Obama is destroying McCan’t upticket, 56-39.)

Lycoming College (10/19-23, likely voters, 9/21-25 in parentheses):

Chris Carney (D-inc): 50 (46)

Chris Hackett (R): 35 (36)

(MoE: ±4.7%)

Holding a seat in an R+8 district that we picked up mostly because the incumbent was accused of choking his mistress shouldn’t be this easy. Chris Carney pushes his lead in this race to 15 points, up from 10 in last month’s Lycoming poll.

In fact, with the exception of a SurveyUSA poll in August that had the race within 4, nobody has seen this as a close race. We might not be so lucky in 2010 in terms of having the wind at our backs, but if Carney can hold on until 2012, he can probably be rewarded with a much safer district (like the older configuration of the 10th, which contained Dem-heavy Scranton).