SSP Daily Digest: 11/2

Poll Closing Times: In case you haven’t seen it already, check out our handy map of poll closing times and key races across the country. Also, we’ll be accepting entries in our predictions contest until 6pm Eastern. Reach for that golden chocolate babka!

Weather: Forecasts today call for plagues of locusts in Arizona, frogs falling from the sky in Illinois, periodic blood showers in Pennsylvania, hellfire and brimstone in Ohio. Partly sunny in California.

AK-Sen: The rumor mill over the last few days has had the NRSC turning its attentions back to Lisa Murkowski, whom they’d once shunned, seeing her as their best plan for holding Alaska as Joe Miller seems to lag. (Of course, they may have semi-consciously been doing that for weeks, running ads hitting Scott McAdams instead of hitting Murkowski.) Miller, for his part, is dismissive, saying he didn’t need them to win the primary.

DC Dems are finally showing some interest here… maybe it was a conscious decision to avoid the taint of Washington in this race, or more likely it was just being blind to the possibility of a pickup here until the last moment. Bill Clinton is robocalling on McAdams’ behalf, and the DSCC finally rolled out a TV ad here over the weekend (anti-Murkowski, not anti-Miller). Here’s what’s probably motivated them: the final Hays Research poll, this time on behalf of the DSCC (instead of the IBEW like the last ones). Its results: Miller 27, McAdams 26, “another candidate you have to write in” 25, and undecided 21. That’s close. With the specter of analyzing tens of thousands of write-in ballots for intent, and the attendant legal challenges, it will almost assuredly be weeks before we have a winner in Alaska. UPDATE: Just got late word of yet another poll here, from yet another local pollster: Dittman. I don’t know who, if anyone Dittman is working for, but they’re pretty Murkowski-friendly results: Murko 37, Miller 26, McAdams 22.

DE-Sen: Despite having essentially no chance of winning, somehow Christine O’Donnell got more media coverage than any other candidate this cycle, according to a Pew study. (Thanks, Gawker!) Of course, it’s hard not to, when she provides us with so much good material, as with her closing argument fail: she’d planned on 30-minute blocks of TV time on the local Fox affiliate and on public access, but somehow neither happened, owing to miscommunication and flat-out never getting around to purchasing the time on Fox. A remarkable end to a remarkable campaign.

PA-08: I imagine you’ll be hearing a lot of stories today and in the following days about voter “suppression” (from the Dems) and “fraud” (from the GOP), but we’re already getting a jump on it in the 8th: both sides are alleging irregularities in absentee ballots. 8,000 ballots have been sequestered at the Bucks County courthouse already, so assuming the margin is less than that, here’s another one we can already expect to find its way into court.

And here are a few more straggler polls:

NC-Sen (PPP): Richard Burr (R-inc) 52%, Elaine Marshall (D) 40%

NH-Sen, NH-Gov (UNH): Kelly Ayotte (R) 54%, Paul Hodes (D) 36%; John Lynch (D-inc) 49%, John Stephen (R) 41%

ID-01 (Greg Smith): Walt Minnick (D-inc) 48%, Raul Labrador (R) 38%

Fox/Pulse:

CO-Sen, CO-Gov: Ken Buck (R) 50%, Michael Bennet (D-inc) 46%; John Hickenlooper (D) 47%, Tom Tancredo (C) 44%, Dan Maes (R) 6%

IL-Sen, IL-Gov: Mark Kirk (R) 46%, Alexi Giannoulias (D) 42%, LeAlan Jones (G) 6%; Bill Brady (R) 44%, Pat Quinn (D-inc) 38%, Scott Lee Cohen (I) 6%, Rich Whitney (G) 4%

NV-Sen: Sharron Angle (R) 48%, Harry Reid (D-inc) 45%

OH-Gov: John Kasich (R) 48%, Ted Strickland (D-inc) 44%

SSP Daily Digest: 11/1 (Morning Edition)

Another huge batch of polls to tide you over until tomorrow.

  • CA-Sen
  • DE-Sen (PDF)
  • DE-AL (x2)
  • FL-Sen (Mason-Dixon)
  • FL-Sen (Susquehanna)
  • KS-Sen
  • KS-Gov
  • KS-04
  • MA-Gov
  • MI-09
  • MN-08
  • MN-Gov
  • MO-Sen (PDF)
  • MO-04 (PDF)
  • MO-07 (PDF)
  • NV-Sen
  • NY-19
  • OH-Gov
  • OR-Gov
  • PA-Sen (PPP)
  • PA-Sen (Muhlenberg)
  • PA-Gov (Muhlenberg)
  • RI-02
  • TX-Gov (PDF)
  • WA-Sen (Washington Poll)
  • WA-Sen (SUSA)
  • WI-Sen
  • WI-Sen (PDF)
  • WI-Gov (PDF)
  • Bonus: Siena has four new NY state senate polls out (PDF):

    SD-03: Brian Foley (D-inc) 37, Lee Zeldin (R) 53

    SD-40: Michael Kaplowitz (D) 44, Greg Ball (R) 49

    SD-48: Darrel Aubertine (D-inc) 43, Patty Ritchie (R) 47

    SD-58: Tim Kennedy (D) 45, Jack Quinn (R) 39, William Stachowski (WFP/I) 9

    Note that Stachowski is the incumbent, but lost the Dem primary to Kennedy.

    SSP Daily Digest: 10/29 (Afternoon Edition)

    FL-Sen: File this under half a year too late and a few million dollars too short. Charlie Crist, as quietly as possible through an advisor making a leak to the Wall Street Journal, says he’d caucus with the Democrats if elected. If he’d said that many months ago, he would have probably had a clearer shot consolidating the Democratic vote and turning it into a two-man race. This comes shortly after a day of conflicting reports on whether or not Bill Clinton tried to get Kendrick Meek to drop out of the race, as recently as last week. Clinton and Meek have offered partial rebuttals, but at any rate, it’s kind of a non-story at this point with only a few days left.

    LA-Sen: Too bad there isn’t time left in the cycle to turn this into an ad: David Vitter’s verbal gymnastics at the last debate as to direct questions as to whether or not he actually broke the law when he was engaging in “very serious sin,” apparently for pay. The short answer is, of course, yes (assuming that his involvement with a prostitution ring occurred in Washington DC and not Reno).

    NV-Sen: Those of you following Jon Ralston’s tweets of the early voting in Nevada with bated breath probably already know this, but thanks to the movement of the mobile voting booths into some Dem-friendly areas, Democrats have actually pulled into the lead (at least by party registration) among early voters, up by 20,000 in Clark County.

    CO-Gov: My first question was why Tom Tancredo would even bother running for office if he felt this way, but then I remembered that he’s running for an executive position this time, not a legislative one. Apparently he’s a believer in a strong executive. Very, very, very strong.

    There is a sort of an elitist idea that seeps into the head of a lot of people who get elected. And they begin to think of themselves as, really, there for only one purpose and that is to make laws. And why would you make laws?

    IL-Gov: Oooops, ad buy fail. A round of Bill Brady ads were pulled from the air on Thursday because the appropriate television stations didn’t get paid first. It appears to have been a “glitch” (their words) rather than a cash flow problem, though, nothing that a Fed-Exed check won’t fix: the ads will resume running tonight.

    PA-Gov: Ah, nice to see that a Republican briefly acknowledge that the fewer people vote, the better Republicans do. Tom Corbett, at a Philadelphia appearance, said that he wanted to keep Democratic participation down, saying “we want to make sure that they don’t get 50 percent.”

    OH-13: Sensing a pattern here? A second woman is coming forward to accuse Tom Ganley of sexual harassment. She filed a police report stating that in 2005, while in the middle of a car transaction, Ganley groped her and later propositioned her. This race, despite Ganley’s money, is seeming increasingly like one of the House Dems’ lesser worries.

    RGA: I’m not sure what you can do with $6.5 million in half a week, but the RGA is determined to find out. They put that much money into four governor’s races in some of the nation’s largest states: Florida, Illinois, Ohio, and (interestingly, since they haven’t sweated this one before) Pennsylvania. (While the other three are for TV ads, in Florida it’s for GOTV… seemingly something that Rick Scott forgot to purchase.)

    Election night: This may be the most shocking news of all today, for the obsessive number crunchers among us. This will be the first election where the powers that be (mostly the AP) will be doing away with precinct reporting. Instead of giving specific numbers of precincts in, they’ll be expressing it as “percentage of expected vote.” The change in longstanding tradition has mostly to do with the increasing prevalence of mail-in votes and early votes, best seen with some locales dumping all their early votes all at once and calling it one precinct, messing with people like us who build complicated models ahead of time.

    SSP TV:

    IL-Sen: Mark Kirk’s last ad calls Alexi Giannoulias “too immature” for the Senate (um, has he actually seen the Senate in action?)

    NV-Sen: Obama! Fear! Tyranny! Aaaghh! And apparently the Carmina Burana playing the background! (Sharron Angle’s closing statement, in other words)

    WI-Sen: Russ Feingold puts on a plaid shirt and faces the camera, touting his accomplishments and newspaper endorsements

    TX-Gov: Bill White also rolls out his newspaper endorsements, as well as lobbing “career politician” at Rick Perry one last time

    MN-06: Taryl Clark’s last ad is a look at real people with real problems in the 6th, and the myriad ways Michele Bachmann blew them off

    Rasmussen:

    CA-Gov: Jerry Brown (D) 49%, Meg Whitman (R) 45%

    CO-Gov: John Hickenlooper (D) 47%, Dan Maes (R) 5%, Tom Tancredo (C) 42%

    KY-Sen: Jack Conway (D) 41%, Rand Paul (R) 53%

    MA-Gov: Deval Patrick (D-inc) 46%, Charlie Baker (R) 44%, Tim Cahill (I) 6%

    OR-Sen: Ron Wyden (D-inc) 53%, Jim Huffman (R) 42%

    PA-Sen: Joe Sestak (D) 46%, Pat Toomey (R) 50%

    YouGov: The English pollster is out with a slew of polls; the numbers seem very plausible, but they’re conducted over the Internet (probably using at least some sort of rigor, but that alone is enough for relegation to the end of the digest)

    CA: Jerry Brown (D) 50%, Meg Whitman (R) 41%; Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 49%, Carly Fiorina (R) 45%

    FL: Alex Sink (D) 44%, Rick Scott (R) 41%; Kendrick Meek (D) 18%, Marco Rubio (R) 42%, Charlie Crist (I) 31%

    NY: Andrew Cuomo (D) 57%, Carl Paladino (R) 27%; Kirsten Gillibrand (D-inc) 57%, Joe DioGuardi (R) 33%; Charles Schumer (D-inc) 59%, Jay Townsend (R) 35%

    OH: Ted Strickland (D-inc) 45%, John Kasich (R) 48%; Lee Fisher (D) 40%, Rob Portman (R) 53%

    PA: Dan Onorato (D) 41%, Tom Corbett (R) 50%; Joe Sestak (D) 44%, Pat Toomey (R) 50%

    WA-Sen: Two Polls Show Tighter Race

    Univ. of Washington for KPLU (10/18-28, likely voters, 10/5-14 in parentheses):

    Patty Murray (D): 51 (50)

    Dino Rossi (R): 45 (42)

    Undecided: 6 (8)

    (MoE: ±4%)

    SurveyUSA for KING (10/24-27, likely voters, 10/11-14 in parentheses):

    Patty Murray (D): 47 (50)

    Dino Rossi (R): 47 (47)

    Undecided: 6 (3)

    (MoE: ±3.8%)

    Two new polls out today both show tightening, of either two or three points in the last two weeks, in the Washington Senate race. This race has become increasingly pivotal in the last few weeks as well… quite literally, in that Nate Silver calls it the Senate’s entire pivot point for control — where, in the simulations he runs where the GOP gets a 10-seat pickup, Washington is most frequently the last race across the line. (Of course, it’s worth considering that as West Virginia seems to be getting better for Joe Manchin, there are increasing chances that Dems could lose Washington and keep the majority regardless of the Washington outcome, which is why overall odds of keeping the Senate are still hovering near 90%.)

    What the closing of the gap means is quite debatable, though, depending on what method you use. For the Univ. of Washington, it’s still a Murray victory, as she’s already over 50 (at a point when, presumably, most people have sent in their ballots); her 8-point lead is down to 6. (They also find the reverse-enthusiasm-gap that seems unique in Washington, finding only a 4-pt edge among RVs.)

    For SurveyUSA, it drops her into a tie, though. There are a couple odd things with the SurveyUSA poll, though; first, it’s strange that undecideds would shoot up in the closing stages of the race, particularly since the state SoS office reports that a majority of ballots have been sent in. Maybe those who haven’t sent ballots yet are still trying to decide; it’s hard to gauge, SUSA doesn’t include the vote breakdown among people who have already voted, which is an odd choice since they’ve done that in some other races, and it’s even more relevant in the (almost) all-mail-in Washington. Also (h/t to Taniel for pointing this out), there’s a steep dropoff in the Dem/GOP makeup of this sample from the last sample from two weeks ago: 33D-29R today, versus 36D-27R before. There’s no party registration in Washington so this is just self-identification, but it’s an abrupt switch.

    One other consideration is the cellphone user gap, which has seemed particularly pronounced in Washington of all states (as seen by the wide split between live-calling Elway, UW, and CNN/Time, vs. auto-dialing SurveyUSA, Rasmussen, and PPP). I’m not a fan of mindlessly applying corrective formulas to poll data, but Nate’s most recent post on the “house effects” generated by the different categories of pollsters may be instructive here: all robocallers have an R+2.0 lean, while live polls have a D+0.7 lean (although that may have to do simply with the sheer weight on the R-side of the spectrum brought by Rasmussen’s massive volume of polling). In particular, SUSA has the most pronounced house effect this year, of R+4.0, even more than Rasmussen at R+2.1.

    One major caveat, though: SurveyUSA used a live-caller overlay on this particular poll, and find that while the cellphone users they reached did tend to lean Democratic, it doesn’t matter much for the final totals. They’d done this once before on a Washington poll over summer, and come to much the same conclusion. That seemed odd at the time and still does, as it would tend to contrast with recent Pew research that showed a 5-point difference between cellphone-inclusive and non-cellphone samples in the generic ballot. With that in mind, I’ll leave it to you just how much special sauce you want to add to make sense of the results… or you can just average them out to 3, which is pretty close to where Murray’s leaked internals (+4) from a few days ago put the race.

    AK-Sen: Murkowski Leads Big (In Friendly Poll), Miller 2nd

    Hellenthal for Alaskans Standing Together (10/25-27, likely voters):

    Scott McAdams (D): 23

    Joe Miller (R): 29

    “Lisa Murkowski, as a write-in”: 44

    Undecided: 5

    (MoE: ±4.9%)

    Here’s one more data point from Alaska, a race that’s impossible to poll but where pollsters are still trying their darndest. I don’t know if I’d trust this poll (sponsored by Alaskans Standing Together, a group that supports Lisa Murkowski, and taken by a local pollster with whom I’m not familiar… by the way, how can a state as small as Alaska support what seems like so many local pollsters?) any more than I’d trust yesterday’s Hays Research poll, but they show the same thing: Murkowski opening up a pretty big lead over Joe Miller and Scott McAdams, both of whom are mired in the 20s. The big caveat here, of course, is this poll uses some prompting, although it does also mention that one would have to write Murkowski in. This new poll shows Miller similarly toxic, with 33/62 favorables (including 46% “very negative”). McAdams’ main problem, by contrast, is lack of name rec: 7% of respondents asked “Who?” when his name was read.

    Also on the Alaska front, there’s still the issue of the printed list of write-in candidates that will be available at polling stations, which the Alaska Supreme Court has basically OK’d, although another hearing will be held today. However, the state was swamped with dozens of people signing up as write-in candidates, apparently in an attempt to bury Murkowski’s name and make it harder to find (this was urged by a local conservative radio talk show host). Here’s a link to the list as it stands: the list is in alphabetical order (and I assume that’s how it’ll be presented at polling places), meaning that anyone with basic familiarity with the letter “M” should be able to operate it without too much trouble. The only names on the list that seem poised to generate any trouble are “Lee Hamerski,” and “Lisa M. Lackey.” (Somehow I gotta wonder if that second one is even real; it’s a little too convenient. At least I.P. Freeleigh didn’t sign up.)

    Finally, McAdams and Murkowski are both out with last-minute TV ads that are worth a watch. McAdams goes negative against Murkowski for going Washington, while Murkowski (probably guided by the poll above) still seems to see Miller as the bigger threat, and goes after him for his hired goons’ detainment of a reporter.

    SSP Daily Digests: 10/29 (Morning Edition)

    Hope your index fingers are rested up, because you’re going to have to do some intense clicking today.

  • CA-Gov
  • CO-Gov
  • CT-Sen
  • CT-Gov (PDF)
  • CT-01
  • CT-02
  • CT-03
  • DE-Sen
  • FL-25
  • GA-08
  • IN-02
  • KY-Sen (Braun)
  • KY-Sen (SUSA)
  • MD-Sen
  • ME-Gov (PDF)
  • MI-Gov
  • MI-07
  • MN-Gov
  • NC-02
  • ND-AL
  • NJ-12 (PDF)
  • NY-23 (PDF)
  • PA-Sen
  • PA-Gov
  • PA-10
  • PA-11
  • RI-Gov
  • RI-01
  • VA-05
  • FL-Gov, FL-Sen: Sink Up In Two Polls, Crist Gains Ground

    Quinnipiac (10/18-24, likely voters, 10/6-10 in parens):

    Alex Sink (D): 45 (44)

    Rick Scott (R): 41 (45)

    Undecided: 11 (9)

    Kendrick Meek (D): 15 (22)

    Marco Rubio (R): 42 (44)

    Charlie Crist (I): 35 (30)

    Undecided: 7 (4)

    (MoE: ±3.5%)

    Quinnipiac’s latest Florida poll is their most optimistic one for Alex Sink in a while; they’ve been one of the more bearish pollsters in Florida for the last few months, and this is their first poll with a Sink lead since August. While this boost might just be chalked up to float within the margin of error, if nothing else it shows that “debategate” (in which Sink got a text message during her debate) didn’t seem to affect the dynamics of the race one way or the other.

    Even more interesting is that Charlie Crist seems to be busting a late move in the Senate race, although it’s probably still too far out of reach for him to pull it out, given the weirdness of the three-way race and the split among left-of-center votes. His five-point gain pulls him within 7 of Marco Rubio. Crist’s gain comes at Meek’s loss (down 7 since the last poll), so there might be some last-minute consolidation by Dem-leaning voters deciding that Crist is the best way to avoid the specter of Rubio. (Crist now gets 51% of Dems, while Meek gets 36% of them. Indies go 43% for Crist, 38% for Rubio, and 9% for Meek.)

    Mason-Dixon (10/25-27, likely voters, 10/4-6 in parens):

    Alex Sink (D): 46 (44)

    Rick Scott (R): 43 (40)

    Undecided: 7 (-)

    (MoE: ±3.5%)

    Mason-Dixon provides some confirmation today of Quinnipiac’s numbers with a poll taken slightly more recently, although they don’t see movement at all over the last few weeks (Sink led by 4, now by 3). Most interestingly, they find Scott’s unfavorables getting much worse: he’s now at 30/52, compared with Sink’s 49/44. It would be pretty remarkable to see anyone win with those kind of favorables, and a Scott win would obviously have a lot to do with the national climate. If there’s any doubt this is the nation’s closest major governor’s race, check out the trendlines from Pollster.com.

    SSP Daily Digest: 10/28 (Afternoon Edition)

    CO-Sen: In case there was any doubt about where Ken Buck is on abortion, new video has come out from June that he’s not only against Roe v. Wade, but against the whole concept of a right of privacy (on the usual teabagger grounds that it wasn’t explicitly laid out in the Constitution).

    PA-Sen: Although there will be a Barack Obama appearance in Philly proper this weekend, Bill Clinton is left with the task of headlining rallies around the rest of the state. Today Clinton appears on Joe Sestak’s behalf in the Philly suburbs, in Bryn Mawr and Cheyney. Clinton also appears with Dan Onorato and John Callahan in Bethlehem today.

    WV-Sen: Good news for John Raese on two different fronts. The Palm Beach architecture commission approved his plans to replace a “giant dollhouse” in the yard of his Palm Beach mansion with a glass conservatory! (Just be sure to hide all the blunt objects when Colonel Mustard comes over for a visit.) Also, it turns out he’s a +13 handicap, occasionally getting down into the high 70s, so he’s definitely got some game on the links. (Unfortunately for Raese, the reason we know this is because somebody leaked his self-reported scorecards from the golf ladder at the Everglades Club, the all-white country club in Palm Beach about which he’s stonewalled on inquiries on whether he’s a member or not.)

    HI-Gov: Credit Mufi Hannemann for good sportsmanship. In response to evidence that his supporters from the primary (who tended to skew socially conservative) were tending to break toward Duke Aiona, Hannemann recently cut a TV ad urging his backers to vote for Neil Abercrombie. The ad’s part of a $200K buy by Hawaii labor unions.

    AZ-03: It’s sounding like that PPP poll that gave him a lead wasn’t a total fluke. Whatever Jon Hulburd is seeing is enough to get him to open up his personal checkbook and hand his campaign another $250K for a final push. No specific numbers are available, but the article says that his internal polling sees him “within the margin of error.” (That’s not usually the phrasing of someone who’s leading in his internals, but maybe he still can gut it out.)

    NC-11: A handful of Democrats in tough races have said that they’d rather vote for someone other than Nancy Pelosi for Speaker, but no one has actually stepped forward until now to volunteer himself as a receptacle for Blue Dog votes. Heath Shuler, previously declared as one of the “no” votes, said he’ll do it if no one else will. There’s not telling how this gambit would work out if the Dems keep the House, or if he’ll be running for minority leader if not.

    Passages: Condolences to the friends and family of Owen Pickett, the former long-time Democratic Rep. from VA-02. Pickett, who was 80, served there from 1987 to 2001.

    SSP TV:

    CT-Sen: Linda McMahon’s closing argument is an endorsement from her daughter, celebrexecutive (that should be a word, if it isn’t) Stephanie

    LA-Sen: Assuming Charlie Melancon loses, still give him credit for using all the material at his disposal: his TV spot hits David Vitter as hard as possible, saying his taxpayer-paid salary paid for prostitutes and it’s a “sin” he represents Louisiana at all

    WV-Sen: Credit to Joe Manchin, too, for not Coakleying this one up; once he found himself in an unexpected close race, he buckled down, found messages that worked, and hammered on them, as in his final ad

    FL-22: Ron Klein goes positive with his last spot, touting endorsements from a variety of citizen groups

    NH-02: Ann McLane Kuster’s ad is a combo platter of hitting Charlie Bass on his Wall Street ways and going positive on her own job creation plans

    Rasmussen:

    CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 49%, Carly Fiorina (R) 46%

    CO-Sen: Michael Bennet (D-inc) 44%, Ken Buck (R) 48%

    FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 45%, Rick Scott (R) 48%

    GA-Sen: Michael Thurmond (D) 29%, Johnny Isakson (R-inc) 59%

    ME-Gov: Libby Mitchell (D) 26%, Paul LePage (R) 40%, Eliot Cutler (I) 26%

    OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D-inc) 44%, John Kasich (R) 48%

    WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D-inc) 47%, Dino Rossi (R) 48%

    (um, do you really want that to be your final answer on WA-Sen?)

    AK-Sen: Unnamed Write-In Candidate Leads

    Hays Research for IBEW (10/25-26, ? likely voters, 10/22 in parens):

    Scott McAdams (D): 29 (25)

    Joe Miller (R): 23 (26)

    “Another candidate you have to write in”: 34 (31)

    Undecided: 13 (17)

    (n = 500)

    Hays Research has apparently been polling the Alaska Senate race repeatedly without releasing the results, and the Mudflats got their hands on the newest batch of numbers, which are a real eye-opener. (Of course, that would suggest that they’re polling on someone’s behalf, and the writeup has no word of that, which seems like an important detail. It also doesn’t give an MoE or even state whether we’re dealing with LVs, RVs, or what here. But you can’t have everything.) (UPDATE: Thanks to Nate Silver, we now know the poll was paid for by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and is of likely voters.)

    Most notably, this is the first poll released that gives Lisa Murkowski a sizable lead, or at least that gives “another candidate you have to write in” a sizable lead, but one would expect the vast majority of that go for Murkowski. (Unlike other polls, this one doesn’t even delve into who people plan to write in. There have been as many methods of polling this impossible-to-poll race as there have been pollsters trying it.) But also significantly, this is the first poll to show Joe Miller in third place and Scott McAdams leading among all named candidates. The memo has trendlines from four different polls, so the collapse of Miller is on full display over the course of October.

    Suggestive of an “anti-incumbent” year is that most of the momentum seems to be with McAdams, not Murkowski, though. Does that mean that Miller votes are entirely flowing to McAdams, rather than to Murkowski? Maybe former Miller votes are also shifting to Murkowski and undecideds are breaking for McAdams. (That would certainly explain why the NRSC has been going anti-McAdams with its latest ad: they’re rightly worried he may be able to shoot the gap.) At any rate, Miller seems to be in a position he can’t recover from, especially as more damning revelations seem to trickle in every day: his favorables are now 26/68, including 60% “very unfavorable.” (If there’s any consolation for him from this, at least he’ll probably still perform better than fellow grifter Dan Maes.)

    Here’s one other item that will help Murkowski: the Alaska Supreme Court promptly overruled a lower court that said that voters can’t use a list of potential write-in candidates. While the list approved by the Supreme Court will not actually be on display in voting booths, those asking for help at polling places can be shown the list. (UPDATE: There’s still a temporary restraining order against the lists for now, though, so this looks like it’ll be an ongoing story. H/t Adam B.) (YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Actually, the lists will be available, but with a few caveats. In Adam’s own words, “What it does is stays the effect of the TRO below — in other words, the Board is not forbidden from posting lists — but says that the lists can’t contain partisan identification for the write-in candidates, and if a voter is given the list, her ballot gets segregated.” Here’s the link to the Supreme Court’s order, if anyone actually wants to read the fine print.)

    SSP Daily Digest: 10/28 (Morning Edition)

    Yer gonna have to click the links….

    AR-Sen: 54-35 Boozman

    CO-Gov: 43-42 Bennet

    FL-Gov: 47-45 Scott

    GA-08: 47-44 Marshall

    HI-Gov: 50-45 Abercrombie

    HI-01: 50-45 Hanabusa

    IN-02: 48-43 Donnelly

    IN-03: 57-33 Stutzman

    KY-03: 50-46 Yarmuth

    LA-Sen: 50-38 Vitter

    MI-07: 50-43 Schauer

    MN-01: 50-41 Walz

    ND-AL: 51-42 Berg

    NH-01: 53-37 Guinta

    NY-Sen-B: 57-34 Gillibrand

    NY-Gov: 55-35

    NY-19 (PDF): 47-46 Hall

    NY-24 (PDF): 48-43 Arcuri

    OH-Sen: 52-37 Portman

    OH-Gov: 49-44 Kasich

    OK-Gov: 56-38 Fallin

    OR-Gov: 46-43 Dudley

    OR-Gov (PDF): 49-45 Kitzhaber

    PA-Sen: 43-36 Toomey

    PA-Gov: 47-32 Corbett

    RI-Gov: 35-28-25 Lincoln-Robitaille-Caprio

    WA-03: 50-46 Herrera

    WA-09: 49-46 Smith

    Margins & Errors: A Barela internal with only toplines in NM-01… Toomey +5 and Corbett +14 in the Mule tracker… Another big blast of polls (PDF) from CNN/Time (CA, CO, KY, NV, PA)… this fucking Sean Bielat memo (nice scan!) doesn’t even give actual toplines… An internal for Republican Bill Marcy in MS-02 asks a weirdly axe-grindy question about taxation before getting to the toplines