Tag: Polls

Rasmussen (10/22, likely voters, 10/9):

Al Franken (D): 41 (43)

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

Dean Barkley (I): 17 (17)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

There’s been little movement in Minnesota over the last few weeks, according to Rasmussen. Al Franken has lost a few points (apparently back to the undecided column), but things seem pretty stationary. The wild card in this race is independent Dean Barkley, but his rapid climb of the last couple months seems to have plateaued. This sample finds Coleman continuing to have trouble with the favorable/unfavorable question (46/50), while Franken actually cracks the 50% mark on favorability this time (51/47, with a very high 31% viewing him “very unfavorable”).

Univ. of Wisconsin (Big 10 Poll) (10/19-22, likely voters):

Al Franken (D): 40

Norm Coleman (R-inc): 34

Dean Barkley (I): 15

(MoE: ±4.2%)

The Big 10 poll, primarily a poll of presidential battlegrounds in midwestern states, also came out today, and this time they threw in the Minnesota Senate race for good measure (so no trendlines available on this one). Here, Franken leads by 6. Obama leads McCain in this sample by a crushing 57-38.

Rasmussen (10/22, likely voters, 10/2 in parens):

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

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

(MoE: ±4.5%)

Ordinarily, there would be no reason to pay much attention to a 2-point shift in a close race, other than as statistical noise. This race, though, has been a game of inches throughout, and has seen very little fluctuation, as most voters seem to have just locked in their preferences following the super-close 2004 election.

This may represent Gregoire being able to finally grab hold of Obama’s coattails for a last-minute boost, small as it may be. (The most recent Elway Poll may confirm this; while the overall spread there seems way too optimistic, it certainly measured movement in her direction.) It may be that Gregoire (or NARAL, on her behalf) finally found an advertising groove that works, hitting Rossi on being pro-life (a fact previously unknown to a surprisingly large number of moderate suburban women voters). Or, as always, it may just be float within the MoE.

Rasmussen (10/22, likely voters, 10/7 in parens):

Jim Martin (D): 45 (44)

Saxby Chambliss (R-inc): 47 (50)

Allen Buckley (L): 1 (2)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

Chambliss’ favorables: 51-43 (down from 57-37). Martin is sitting at 48-43 (from 45-38 in the previous poll).

The DSCC faces a choice here. Remarkably, we now know that a runoff will be required if no one clears 50%, and most SSP readers agree that this would disadvantage Martin (after all, the GOP legislature re-wrote this rule with their own best interests in mind).

The DSCC has been making modest expenditures in this race so far — should they go all-in right now and carpetbomb the state with anti-Chambliss ads, even if the prospect of Martin clearing 50% seems very uncertain (to say the least)? Or do they keep spending at current levels and save their firepower for a runoff?

SurveyUSA for Roll Call (10/20-21, likely voters):

Debbie Halvorson (D): 50

Marty Ozinga (R): 37

Jason Wallace (G): 9

(MoE: ±4%)

Two Democratic polls (Bennett Petts & Normington and Anzalone Liszt) have pegged this race in the 50-30 range for Halvorson, and while this poll isn’t quite that rosy, this is excellent news all around.

The DCCC has been hammering Ozinga since August with cable buys and targeted mail (and shows no signs of relenting, having just taken out a hefty broadcast buy), and the money has taken a big toll on the King of Concrete — his favorable rating is just 29-37, a brutal level for anyone. And despite relentless efforts to tie Halvorson to widely disliked Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, she retains a 41-27 rating.

Bonus finding: Obama leads McCain by 49-44 in this district, which is even more optimistic than Halvorson’s own internals.

Survey USA (10/20-21, likely voters, 9/7-9 in parens):

Darcy Burner (D): 50 (44)

Dave Reichert (R-inc): 46 (54)

(MoE: ±4%)

This race has spent most of this cycle at the top of the races-to-watch list for the blogosphere, after Darcy Burner captivated the netroots in 2006 en route to losing to one-term incumbent Dave Reichert in this D+2 district by a few points, and then continued running for 2008 without missing a beat. However, a lot of blogospherians (including us at SSP) started worrying a bit in the immediate wake of the financial crisis, when other netroots-backe rematch candidates in swing districts (Larry Kissell, Eric Massa, Dan Seals) suddenly started to climb into the lead but Darcy Burner continued to languish (trailing not just in a Research 2000 poll but a Democratic internal as well).

However, two subsequent internal polls showed Burner with a lead, and then Burner posted titanic fundraising numbers for the third quarter; the one thing she didn’t have in her arsenal was a public poll having shown her ahead. Well, finally, we’ve got one; she’s up 4 in the latest KING5-sponsored SurveyUSA poll, a sharp reversal of fortune from her 10-point deficit last time, taken during the afterglow of the GOP convention. With that in mind, Swing State Project is returning this race to “Tossup” status.

It’s unclear whether this race was moving at the same speed as the other similarly-situated races and R2K just happened to miss that, or if this race truly did take longer to surge because, as I’ve speculated before, the tech-heavy WA-08 is better insulated from the financial crisis (up to the point where people open their 401(k) statements). Either way, though, we’re starting to look pretty good in this race. (And if the NRCC’s decision to dump $454,000 into this race, the largest component of their multi-million dollar ad buy today, is any indication, the GOP knows it too.)

One other developing happening in this race: there’s a kerfuffle, helped along by the Seattle Times (the more conservative of Seattle’s two papers), over Burner’s degree from Harvard. Nobody’s disputing that she graduated, just parsing whether or not she double-majored in computer science and economics. (Short answer, apparently they don’t even have ‘majors’ at Harvard.) I suspect this will have the same effect as the Reichert-cheating-at-media-buying scandal that came a few days before: it’ll rile up the partisans but whoosh right past the few remaining undecideds.

Research 2000 has been working double-time in Kentucky lately; they ran a poll for Daily Kos last week showing McConnell up by four, and they turned right around and fielded another poll for the Lexington Herald-Leader (10/19-21, likely voters, 10/15-16 in parens):

Bruce Lunsford (D): 43 (42)

Mitch McConnell (R-inc): 47 (46)

(MoE: ±4%)

Virtually unchanged. Once again, Lunsford still faces the same problem: while McConnell’s unfavorables are high, so are his. Which man will they dislike more on election day?

Ivan Moore for Anchorage Press (10/17-19, likely voters, 10/3-6 in parens):

Mark Begich (D): 46 (49)

Ted Stevens (R-inc): 45 (45)

(MoE: ±4.4%)

Ethan Berkowitz (D): 51 (51)

Don Young (R-inc): 43 (42)

(MoE: ±4.4%)

After the initial shock of Ted Stevens’ indictment wore off (giving Mark Begich a huge boost), it seems like voters have been more and more willing to give Stevens some of the benefit of the doubt until a verdict is handed down, as the numbers in this race have drawn back to a tossup. With the case now in the hands of the jurors, it looks like we’re likely to have a verdict (or a mistrial) before Election Day, so whatever happens in the jury box may well decide the election.

Things look a little more settled in the House race, where Ethan Berkowitz continues to lead Don Young by high double single-digits. One note for caution, though, while Berkowitz’s favorables are as high as they’ve ever been in an Ivan Moore poll, the same is true of Young: Young’s positive/negative rating is 44-47, also his best showing in an Ivan Moore poll… but Young’s position in the head-to-head poll hasn’t improved much. Maybe the good folks of Alaska are starting to fondly recall why they love their own little grizzled 1890s prospector, consarn it… but still plan to turn the page on him.

Perhaps most noteworthy in this poll is the presidential numbers, showing Obama climbing much closer to McCain at 53-42 (reverting closer to the pre-Palin numbers, down from as much as a 54-35 McCain lead during the GOP convention). Perhaps the novelty effect of an Alaskan on the ticket is starting to wear off.

Rasmussen (10/21, likely voters, 9/30 in parens):

Bruce Lunsford (D): 43 (42)

Mitch McConnell (R-inc): 50 (51)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

Rasmussen continues to splash a little cold water on the idea that this race is a tossup, but the trend has been good for Lunsford since July. McConnell continues to lose support from Democrats (down to 23% from 28% in the September poll), but made up some ground among unaffiliated voters. If I were McConnell, I’d still be scared of these trend lines, though.

UPDATE: The DSCC is out with a new ad hitting McConnell on trade:

Elway (10/16-19, registered voters, 9/8-10):

Chris Gregoire (D-inc): 51 (48)

Dino Rossi (Prefers GOP Party): 39 (44)

(MoE: ±5%)

This comes as a bit of a surprise: after month upon month of ties and minuscule Gregoire leads in Rasmussen and SurveyUSA polling (with a brief boomlet for Rossi during the peak of Palinmania), local pollster Elway shows up with a poll with Gregoire blowing off the doors with a 12-point lead.

Interestingly, Gregoire seems to be picking up a bit of Republican support. Gregoire is supported by 85% of Democrats (which is consistent with other polls I’ve seen, and pointed to her main problem: holding down the number of Obama/Rossi ticket-splitters), but Rossi may have lost a bit of his headlock on the state’s Republicans, as this poll reports his support among GOP Partiers as only 87%.

I can’t tell from the writeup whether this poll identified Rossi as “Republican” or “prefers GOP Party,” as he appears on the ballot (last time around, Elway tested it both ways and found that Rossi performed significantly better when identified as “GOP” rather than “Republican”); if Elway used only “Republican” this time, that may be what’s making the difference here. Although Elway has an excellent reputation in Washington political circles, their numbers have tended to be quite different from the robo-pollers; we’ll have to wait till Election Day to see who has the better model.

Lake Research for Annette Taddeo (10/8-10/21, likely voters, June in parens):

Annette Taddeo (D): 41 (27)

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-inc): 48 (58)

(MoE: ±4.6%)

That’s some big movement for Taddeo since June, and the gain is across the board for Democrats — Obama has pulled ahead of McCain by 47-45 here, after trailing McCain by 10 points in June. These results come after a Carlos McDonald poll from late September showed Ros-Lehtinen ahead by 48-35 — a wide margin, but also not a particularly strong top line for a longtime incumbent.

Taddeo has made a lot of progress, increasing her name recognition from 14% to 63%. With Democrats experiencing a remarkable voter registration surge in this district (cutting a 23,202 GOP registration advantage in 2006 down to a deficit of only 1,730 voters this year), Ros-Lehtinen could end up receiving a November surprise.

The full polling memo is available below the fold.

UPDATE: Barack Obama weighs in on this race:

Speaking at his “jobs summit” in Palm Beach Community College, Barack Obama dropped Congressional hopeful Annette Taddeo’s name.

He told the crowd she is a “future member of Congress — as long as you guys turn out to vote!”