Tag: Polls

CT-Sen: Obama alert! The POTUS is going to do a fundraiser in Stamford for Dick Blumenthal on Sept. 16th, the same day he was already scheduled to do a DNC event in Greenwich. Sorry to get all emo on you again, but if even Dick Blumenthal needs Obama’s help….

DE-Sen: It’s the battle of the sketchy polls! The Tea Party Express is touting a survey which supposedly shows Mike Castle up just 44-38 in the Republican primary over Christine O’Donnell. (Actually, they say Castle is at “43.7%” – too many significant digits is a classic sign of sketchiness.) Meanwhile, the Fix claims that “Internal GOP polling conducted last week showed Castle with a margin of nearly 20 points over O’Donnell.” Anyhow, the TPX has no plans to evacuate in their moment of… well, we’ll see if it’s their moment of triumph… despite a surge of new questions about O’Donnell’s fitness as a candidate. Among other things: Former aides say she never paid promised salaries on her 2008 campaign against Joe Biden, and she just received her degree from Farleigh Dickinson University last week, despite having attended 17 years ago and having repeatedly described herself as a graduate. Come on, baby, hold together!

IL-Sen: Amanda Terkel has spotted a trend among Mark Kirk’s public statements: He can’t shut up about the economic crisis in Greece – and Terkel thinks Kirk is attempting to link Alexi Giannoulias (who is of Greek descent) to the meltdown. Perhaps most egregious is Kirk’s statement that while he “wore a U.S. Navy uniform, Alexi Giannoulias wore a basketball uniform in Greece.” Really? That last part is relevant? A pretty ugly example of “othering.”

LA-Sen: A little bit of Cajun-flavored cat fud: Gov. Bobby Jindal won’t endorse Sen. David Vitter in his re-election campaign. Jindal claims he doesn’t get involved in federal races, but WDSU has two very recent examples to the contrary. Anyhow, I can’t think of too many sitting governors who haven’t endorsed same-party, same-state senators, can you?

NH-Sen: Finally, a survey of the severely under-polled GOP senate primary in New Hampshire – though it’s from Republican pollster Magellan, who likes to do Rasmussen-style one-day samples (a methodology that I think it’s fair to say is not a best practice). Anyhow, here are the results (9/1, likely voters, May in parens):

Kelly Ayotte (R): 34 (38)

Ovide Lamontagne (R) : 21 (9)

Bill Binnie (R) : 17 (29)

Jim Bender (R) : 13 (4)

Other: 4 (4)

Undecided: 11 (15)

(MoE: ±3.3%)

UT-Sen: The battle for Orrin Hatch’s senate seat – which won’t take place until 2012 – is already getting ugly. Hatch is claiming that freshman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (who, you’ll recall, already knocked off one sitting incumbent at a state convention in 2008) promised him he wouldn’t challenge him next cycle. Chaffetz says he only pledged not to run against Sen. Bob Bennett, who of course already lost earlier this year. A Hatch spokesbot took off the gloves in response, saying: “Senator Hatch takes very seriously the principle of keeping his word. Of course, I suppose Jason can break it any time he wants to.”

WV-Sen: Robert Byrd’s family is excoriating self-funding Republican John Raese for using a photo of Dem Joe Manchin and President Obama that was taken at Byrd’s memorial service earlier this year in an attack ad. Raese’s campaign manager said, “That’s a stock photo. We had no idea it was from the memorial service.” Well, now you know.

AZ-Gov: Does this statement remind you of O.J. Simpson’s ill-fated “hypothetical” book, If I Did It? Because that was the first thing I thought of:

“That was an error, if I said that,” Brewer said about beheadings occurring in Arizona.

AZ-01: Ann Kirkpatrick is out with her first ad of the cycle, a pretty dull positive spot about how she donated 5% of her congressional salary… national treasury… opposed bailout… etc., etc. Ordinarily I’d just relegate this to our ad roundup at the bottom of the digest, but I also wanted to point out this great observation from SSP’s own Johnny Longtorso: namely, the fact that the Navajo Nation (the largest Indian tribe in the United States) is holding its presidential election this fall, which may help Kirkpatrick on the turnout front. (Indians vote heavily Dem.) According to Wikipedia, some 130,000 Navajo live within the nation’s boundaries in Arizona (it also includes parts of Utah and New Mexico), almost all of which is contained within the 1st CD.

AZ-08: You know how the WWF tried to become the WWE? Well, true hardcore wingnuts aren’t content with (the bad kind of) SSP – they want SSE: Social Security elimination. Given how toxic this is in the real world (i.e., for the 99.999% of people who have never heard of John Galt), it’s no wonder that Republican nominee Jesse Kelly now say he wants to “protect” Social Security. Good luck getting past statements like this one, from just last year: “If you have any ideas on that, I’m all ears. I would love to eliminate the program.”

IA-01: This doesn’t seem like a positive sign to me. Bruce Braley is going on the air with an ad (watch it here) hitting back against an outside group’s attack ad – not something a candidate in an apparently “Safe D” race ordinarily feels a need to do. The group, American Future Fund, is accusing Braley of “supporting” the Park51 community center, though Braley has taken the standard “don’t wanna deal with it” approach of calling it a local zoning issue for NYC. On the flipside, I’ll take it as a good sign that Braley doesn’t plan to get Martha Coakley’d. (Though doesn’t it sound like Braley’s “I approve this message” was recorded via cell phone? Does that mean the ad was rushed on to the air?) NWOTSOTB for Braley, though AAF claims it has spent $50K and plans to spend more.

IN-03: A common theme rears its head once more: A Republican rails loudly against bailouts, but it turns out he’s been the beneficiary of government largesse himself. In this case, Dem Tom Hayhurst has been attacking GOPer Marlin Stutzman for accepting $180K in agricultural subsidies since 1995. But as the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reports, just last month Stutzman said: “It’s time to get rid of farm subsidies. The subsidies only manipulate the market.”

KS-04: You know, we always love reporting on cat fud for cat fud’s sake. Sometimes it’s just a whiff, but other times, the cat fud can really stink up a race. Case in point: Mike Pompeo, a top competitor for GOP Dickbag of the Year, wasn’t endorsed by any of the candidates he beat in the Republican primary, and even refused to return phone calls from his opponents. Now, the cats are coming home to roost, because one of those opponents, rich guy Wink Hartman, is considering re-entering the race on the Libertarian Party line. (The Lib candidate dropped out of the race for health reasons.) Hartman, who spent almost $1.6 million of his own money on the primary, notably includes among his reasons for wanting to get back in the game the fact that Pompeo “misrepresented Hartman’s pro-life position and residency.” The Libertarians have until Sept. 20th to decide whether to tap Hartman. In any event, this could provide a huge boost to Dem Raj Goyle, who appears to be in a surprisingly good position to stage an upset.

LA-03: In an unusual move, the Louisiana state Republican Party has formally endorsed Jeff Landry over Hunt Downer in the runoff. State parties don’t typically take sides in primaries like this, but it sounds like the powers that be are eager to see Downer bail, rather than prolong the race all the way until October 3rd. I personally suspect that Downer has no chance in the second round, and I think he’ll wind up playing Kevin Calvey to Landry’s Jim Lankford. (Check out our OK-05 tag if the analogy isn’t ringing any bells.)

NC-11: Heh – looks like Heath Shuler’s suggesting he could run for Speaker of the House, clearly as a way to distance himself from Nancy Pelosi. Shuler also claimed that cats eventually turn into dogs.

NH-02: Nice – progressive fave Ann McLane Kuster raised $223K in her pre-primary report (7/1-8/25), totally kicking the asses of all the other major candidates (Katrina Swett (D): $37K, Charlie Bass (R): $57K, Jennifer Horn (R): $39K). As for cash, it goes Kuster: $450K, Swett: $798K, Bass: $312K, Horn: $32K. Even better news: Kuster is touting an internal poll from the Mellman Group showing her with a commanding 47-24 lead over Swett in the primary, which is Sept. 14th.

NY-20, NY-23: Rahm Emanuel is headlining a joint fundraiser on Sept. 19th for two upstate Dems: Scott Murphy of the 20th CD and Bill Owens of the 23rd. Murphy has $1.5 million on hand but Owens has only $600K.

PA-06: A nasty bit of racial ugliness from the campaign of Jim Gerlach. Said a spokesman about Dem opponent Manan Trivedi: “The only one who has played the race card here is him, by going to Indian-American groups to raise money.”

SC-02: The Office of Congressional Ethics is investigating Rep. Joe Wilson’s trips abroad – at least thirty over the last eight years – and his per diem spending habits. Wilson is a prolific traveler on the taxpayer’s dime, ranking 29th among current House members and 39th among 734 members who’ve served since 1994, according to The State. Wilson has tried to downplay prior reports of the probe, claiming it was only about $12 spent on some cheap mementos from Afghanistan, but that’s evidently not the case. Meanwhile, Dem Rob Miller has a new ad out hitting Wilson for his support of CAFTA. Check it out – I think it’s pretty effective.

VA-05: In a move that vaguely brings to mind Carl Mumpower, teabagger Jeffrey Clark said he’d withdraw from the race if the party or parties responsible for disseminating information about his financial history came forward to claim responsibility. Dem Tom Perriello’s campaign said it wasn’t them, but Republican Rob Hurt wouldn’t say anything, so Clark says he’s staying in the race. Feel the Mumpower!

OH-AG: Wrapping up some odds-and-ends from their recent Ohio poll, PPP find ex-Sen. Mike DeWine leading incumbent Dem AG Richard Cordray 44-40.

DCCC: Another day, another triage story. This time, the NYT claims that “party leaders are preparing a brutal triage of their own members in hopes of saving enough seats to keep a slim grip on the majority.” And while they don’t have an actual quote from him, the Times claims Chris Van Hollen “conceded” that Dems “would ultimately cut loose members who had not gained ground.” In response, reports The Hill:

Van Hollen released a statement saying that the story “erroneously” said that the DCCC would redirect resources to two dozen viable campaigns if a review in the next two weeks showed that vulnerables weren’t gaining ground.

I have to wonder: Did the NYT really get Van Hollen wrong here, or is CVH deliberately trying to send mixed messages in order to motivate his troops through fear?

Public Policy Polling (8/27-28, likely voters, no trend lines):

Ethan Berkowitz (D): 37

Sean Parnell (R): 55

Undecided: 8

(MoE: ±2.7%)

Of a trio of polls released in the past week, these are the best numbers for Sean Parnell (an NRSC-commissioned Basswood Research poll had Parnell up by 54-40, and Rasmussen, for whatever it’s worth, had the race at 53-43). The bloom has faded a bit from the Parnell flower, though, as PPP finds that his job approval rating is at 50-36, down from 58-19 earlier in the year.

One thing not considered by this PPP poll are the third-party options. For a few days, it looked like Republican Bill Walker, who pulled a third of the GOP primary vote against Parnell, might run on the Alaskan Independence Party line in place of the current AIP nominee, 80 year-old Don Wright. After saying that he would bow out of the race, Wright has reversed course and now insists that he’s staying on the ballot. Walker says he’s still considering running as a write-in or on the Libertarian line, but that would require the consent of the Alaskan Libertarian Party and their nominee William Toien. (For their part, the Libertarians say they would “consider it”.) If anything’s going to happen, it’ll have to happen pretty soon — state law says that a party can replace its nominee up to 48 days before election day.

If Walker did manage to land on the Libertarian line, it might make for a more interesting general election — recall that Democrat Tony Knowles was successful in 1994 thanks in part to vote-splitting between the GOP and the Alaskan Independence nominees.

Meanwhile, we also have some House numbers:

Harry Crawford (D): 36

Don Young (R-inc): 55

Undecided: 8

(MoE: ±2.7%)

After surviving near-death in 2008, it’s looking like Don Young won’t have any troubles this fall. The real marquee match-up will be the Senate race between Scott McAdams and Joe Miller.

Market Shares Corp for the Chicago Tribune/WGN (8/28-9/1, likely voters, no trend lines):

Pat Quinn (D-inc): 32

Bill Brady (R): 37

Scott Lee Cohen (I): 4

Rich Whitney (G): 2

Lex Green (L): 2

Did You Know… that Pat Quinn has not held the lead in a single poll this year?

Granted, nearly all of these polls have come from just two sources (PPP and Rasmussen), but that’s really a non-comfort here given the sheer volume of them.

SurveyUSA (8/31-9/2, likely voters, no trend lines):

Rick Larsen (D-inc): 46

John Koster (R): 50

Undecided: 4

(MoE: ±4%)

This poll comes in the wake of the final top-two primary results giving Koster a 298 vote lead over Larsen. Digging deeper, though, two Democratic candidates took a full 10% of the primary vote, resulting in a final score of 52-48 for Team Blue. This is the second time that Koster has won the top-two primary vote against Larsen, the first time coming in 2000, where Larsen ultimately won the general election by 50-46.

Comparing these results to previous SUSA polls of this district in 2008 and 2006, the partisan composition of the sample isn’t what’s hurting Larsen; the damage is coming from Larsen’s struggles among independent voters. He loses those voters by 12 points, compared to monster-sized wins among indies in the past two cycles. The 18-34 year-old vote has shrunk substantially, too, down to 13% of the sample — leaving behind a demographic that flocks to Koster by 22 points.

You may take issue with the poll, but this one is shaping up to be a very close race.

SurveyUSA (8/31-9/2, likely voters, 7/17-20 in parens):

Rick Boucher (D-inc): 50 (52)

Morgan Griffith (R): 40 (39)

Jeremiah Heaton (I): 5 (5)

Undecided: 4 (5)

(MoE: ±4.2%)

SurveyUSA again takes the pulse of the much-hyped race between veteran Dem Rep. Rick Boucher and Virginia House of Delegates Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, and finds that the needle hasn’t budged significantly over the past month and a half. SUSA’s likely voter universe has gotten slightly more Republican over that time, shifting from 33D-35R-29I to 32D-37R-29I, but Boucher is still strong enough in less-friendly demographics to maintain a decent lead. Boucher takes a quarter of the Republican vote and holds a one-point lead among indies — very strong numbers compared to the performance of other Democratic incumbents playing on red turf this year.

We haven’t seen a great deal of polling from this race, but all indicators are surprisingly positive for Boucher. In addition to this pair of SUSA polls, a mid-August Benenson Strategy Group internal poll for Rick Boucher gave him a 55-32 lead over Griffith. With plenty of time left on the clock, Boucher is by no means safe, but it appears he has slipped down the priority list for Republican gunners this fall.

Market Shares Corp for the Chicago Tribune/WGN (8/28-9/1, likely voters, no trend lines):

Alexi Giannoulias (D): 34

Mark Kirk (R): 34

LeAlan Jones (G): 6

Mike Labno (L): 3

Undecided: 22

(MoE: ±4%)

One area where Giannoulias can gain some ground is among African American voters, who favor him over Kirk by 58-3 margin. This one is shaping up to be a battle of inches, though:

AK-Sen: Joe Miller sure sounds like he’s measuring the drapes here, doesn’t he, with his talk about how much he’d “love” to serve on the Judiciary and Armed Services committees? Donate to Scott McAdams and help make sure we force Joe Miller to make a humiliating, droopy-dog run back to Neiman Marcus to return those curtains.

DE-Sen: Oh, I’m afraid the Tea Party Express will be QUITE operational by the time Mike Castle arrives! The NYT reports that the TPX is going up with five different ads (two TV and three radio) on behalf of Christine O’Donnell, and they have a rough cut of one of the TV spots (check the link). As for how big a buy we’re talking, the TPX just filed its first independent expenditure report, for $46K. Their usual practice is to dribble things out in smallish reports one at a time – but don’t worry, it’ll snowball.

FL-Sen: Charlie Crist is spending over half a million on a new TV buy. We don’t know what ads he’ll be running, but the St. Petersburg Times has some pretty good info on where they’ll appear (notably in Dem-leaning markets). Check the link for full details.

WI-Sen: GOPer Ron Johnson raised $1.2 million between July 1 and Aug. 25th, while Sen. Russ Feingold took in $920K. Johnson also loaned his campaign another $2.9 million out of his own coffers (which of course have been greatly bolstered over the years by government loans and grants to his plastics company). RonJo has been outspending Feingold, though, and has $1.6 mil in the bank compared to the senator’s $3.1 mil.

FL-Gov: Alex Sink has a new ad, touching on the oil spill and calling for a diversification of Florida’s economy. NWOTSOTB, but the spot is apparently airing in Florida’s panhandle.

GA-Gov: Nathan Deal just performed a classic document dump – and not one that’s likely to help him. He made public 28 years of his personal income tax returns, but none of this has anything to do with his auto salvage business which was the focus of a probe by the Office of Congressional Ethics.

CO-04: The House Race Hotline reports that the NRCC has reserved over $1 million in air time in the 4th CD. Let’s see if they actually come through with all that scrilla, though.

FL-08: Put away your can openers – no cat fud here. All six of Dan Webster’s Republican primary rivals have endorsed him, including teabagger Patricia Sullivan. However, Peg Dunmire is still in the race, on the actual Tea Party line.

IN-02: Joe Donnelly has a new spot out (NWOTSOTB), hitting Jackie Walorski for her support of a 23% national sales tax (as well as her desire to eliminate the home mortgage interest deduction). This issue is one that helped sink GOPer Tim Burns in the PA-12 special, so it has potency. I know that sometimes when Dems sink their teeth into this one, weenie liberals like to whine that what Republicans really mean is that they want to replace other taxes with this one. You know what? Let them make that argument. You don’t need to make it for them.

IN-09: Republican Todd Young has a new ad out, featuring footage of Baron Hill imperiously telling a journalism student that she couldn’t videotape a town hall. NWOTSOTB, but CQ notes that the spot is “currently airing only in the Louisville, Ky. market.”

LA-02: With Al Franken acting, you know, senatorial, it looks like Joe Cao has decided to take up the mantle of Stuart Smalley. Sayeth Cao: “I love the president, and I believe he truly likes me.” What a wiener.

MA-09: Labor activist Mac D’Alessandro scored the endorsement of NARAL in his primary bid against anti-choice incumbent Rep. Stephen Lynch. D’Alessandro raised $178K in the pre-primary period (7/1-8/25) and had $158K on hand for the stretch run. Lynch took in only $66K but had a million bucks in the bank.

NJ-03: Dem Rep. John Adler received the endorsement of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which did not back anyone in the race two years ago. They also say they’ll provide financial help. (The Courier Post notes that the district includes Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.) Adler’s also got a second negative spot out, hitting Republican Jon Runyan for his minimalist voting record. NWOTSOTB, and get a load of this stonewalling: “Campaign manager Geoff Mackler would not disclose the size of the buy, where the ads were committed to air or for how long they would air, saying he does not discuss strategy with reporters.” But I don’t think that should be the end of the story for a journalist. Hell, one of my jobs on a campaign I worked on in the 90s was to track down enemy ad buys. Reporters can do it, too. (And BTW, if you haven’t seen Adler’s first ad, I highly recommend you do so.)

NH-01, NH-02: John DiStaso has an asburd wealth of updates on New Hampshire’s two House races, including word that Charlie Bass is set to release his first ad (watch it here), a $40,000 buy on New Hampshire TV. There’s also news of a GOP primary poll in the 1st CD, taken by Cross Target on behalf of the right-wing group Americans for Prosperity. Sean Mahoney is at 33, Frank Guinta at 26, Rich Ashooh at 10, and Bob Bestani at 5. Mahoney’s been out with a positive/negative ad comparing his record to Guinta’s, making it clear that he thinks this poll is right about who the real contenders are. Guinta apparently has a new response ad coming this week.

NY-24: Mike Arcuri is up with a new ad, a positive bio spot. NWOTSOTB, though he has two slightly different versions, one of which is airing in Utica, the other Syracuse (see both here).

PA-07: A nice break for Dem Bryan Lentz: After a series of adverse rulings, Pat Meehan’s campaign withdrew its legal challenge to the candidacy of Jim Schneller, a teabagger who petitioned his way on to the ballot… thanks to a lot of help from Lentz supporters.

PA-10: Interesting: Back when he was a US Attorney, Tom Marino served as a reference for a casino application for a man his office was investigating. In fact, the news was so explosive it led to the DOJ transferring the investigation to another office – and to Marino’s resignation as USA. Back in May, though, Marino told a radio host that the DOJ had given him written permission to provide that reference, but he hasn’t produced it (yet). Dem Chris Carney is hitting him for this, asking, “Where’s the letter?”

WI-08: Steve Kagen is up with his first ad, and it’s a good one. Among other things, he touts the fact that he has refused congressional health coverage until everyone in America has health insurance. He also refers to himself as “Dr. Steve Kagen,” which is probably a helpful alternative to “Congressman” these days.

Enthusiasm Gap: Tom Jensen takes a look at a painful “what if” – as in, what if there were no enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans this year? Among other things, he thinks Alex Sink would have a double-digit lead and that Elaine Marshall would be running slightly ahead of Richard Burr. But check out his full chart.

Dumping Ground: We’ve brought up some serious methodological issues in the past that we have with those zone-flooding American Action Fund House race polls, so it’s best if we just confine the following to their own quarantine zone. (Those issues, by the way, included extremely aged samples and the fact that the GOP pollster, Ayres McHenry, asked respondents about their opinion of the healthcare bill right before diving into the topline match-ups.)

AZ-01: Ann Kirkpatrick (D-inc) 41%, Paul Gosar (R) 47%

AZ-05: Harry Mitchell (D-inc) 44%, David Schweikert (R) 50%

AZ-08: Gabby Giffords (D-inc) 46%, Jesse Kelly (R) 46%

CA-11: Jerry McNerney (D-inc) 44%, David Harmer (R) 45%

CA-47: Loretta Sanchez (D-inc) 45%, Van Tran (R) 43%

CO-03: John Salazar (D-inc) 43%, Scott Tipton 51%

CO-04: Betsy Markey (D-inc) 39%, Cory Gardner (R) 50%

NM-01: Martin Heinrich (D-inc) 49%, Jon Barela (R) 41%

NV-03: Dina Titus (D-inc) 45%, Joe Heck (R) 48%

OR-05: Kurt Schrader (D-inc) 44%, Scott Bruun (R) 36%

Braun Research for cn|2 (8/30-9/1, likely voters, 8/16-18 in parens):

Jack Conway (D): 37 (42)

Rand Paul (R): 42 (41)

Undecided: 20 (16)

(MoE: ±3.5%)

Braun Research continues their biweekly polling odyssey of Kentucky with a freshly-baked survey showing Rand Paul bouncing back to a five-point lead. For those keeping score, these cn|2 polls have bounced back and forth, from 3 and 10-point Paul leads in their first two rounds, to a 1-point lead for Conway two weeks ago.

I’m not too sure if you can stitch together a narrative from high-MoE sub-samples like these, but it’s still interesting:

Paul picked up support from the last poll in Conway’s two stronghold areas from the primary, including his backyard of the 3rd Congressional District that covers Louisville. The cn|2 Poll shows Paul leading Conway by 10 points in the 6th Congressional District that covers Lexington and Central Kentucky.

The poll results for congressional districts has a margin of error of about 8.8 points in this cn|2 Poll.

Conway has narrowed previous gaps in the 2nd Congressional District in west-central Kentucky from eight to four points. And support for the Democratic candidate has swung 17 points in the 5th Congressional District – which covers Eastern Kentucky – over the last two weeks. He went from being down three points to going up 14 points in this latest poll.

This is the second poll in a row where Braun found Conway surging in the Eastern 5th CD. A month ago, Conway trailed Paul by 14% in that district, and now leads by the same margin. Are we seeing the effect of Rand Paul’s call to pull federal funds from local anti-drug initiatives (a particularly salient issue in Eastern Kentucky) at play here? While still respecting that portly margin of error, I’m guessing so.

Meanwhile, we also have some gubernatorial numbers (no trend lines):

Steve Beshear (D-inc): 44

David Williams (R): 38

Undecided: 15

Steve Beshear (D-inc): 49

Phil Moffett (R): 29

Undecided: 19

(MoE: ±3.5%)

By a 44-36 margin, voters say that Beshear deserves a second term. Considering the carnage we’re seeing for other incumbent Dem governors this year, those numbers could be a lot worse. Nevertheless, this should be a very competitive race, although likely less so if the tea-flavored ticket led by businessman Phil Moffett can win the primary against state Senate leader David Williams. Remember — this off-year race is only a year away!

One red flag about this, though, is that I suspect that Braun is using the same likely voter sample for the Senate race as for the Governor’s race. Perhaps two separate samples would have yielded similar results, but I don’t think this is the most methodologically precise approach.

For their part, the Williams campaign has released an internal poll taken by some firm called Got-Focus, showing Beshear down by 4.

• DE-Sen: Christine O’Donnell’s radio interview on a local station yesterday should answer any doubts about whether or not the new Tea Party fave is ready for prime time (the answer: she isn’t). Mostly it’s notable for how testy it got, but also for O’Donnell pushing back on rumors that Mike Castle is gay – rumors that apparently no one has ever heard until O’Donnell brought them up in the first place. At any rate, Castle isn’t content to just stand back and let her dig her own hole: not wanting to fall into the Lisa Murkowski trap, his camp confirms that his last-minute pre-primary ad buy will be negative against O’Donnell. He also said he won’t be debating with (or otherwise even talking to) O’Donnell… ordinarily a safe decision for a quasi-incumbent, but who knows, maybe a mid-debate implosion by O’Donnell would be all Castle needs to put this one away.

• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist’s out with an internal today from Fredrick Polls, and while it gives him the lead, it’s a small enough edge compared with his rather robust leads pre-Dem primary that it shouldn’t fill anybody with much confidence about where his trendlines are headed. He leads Marco Rubio and Kendrick Meek 35-34-17. That comes against the backdrop of getting squeezed in both directions, with the NRSC “pledging” (I don’t know what that means, but it’s not actual reservations) $2.5 million for the race, and Meek airing a new radio ad going after Crist’s GOP past, airing Crist’s own words, including calling himself “pro-life” and a “Jeb Bush Republican.” At least Crist is getting some backing from one rather unusual corner: state Sen. Al Lawson, who just lost the FL-02 primary to Allen Boyd, just endorsed Crist.

• NY-Sen-B, NY-Gov: Maybe I should’ve been patient yesterday instead of complaining about Quinnipiac’s lack of New York primary numbers, because they rolled them out today. At any rate, they find, as I’d suspected, things tightening in the GOP gubernatorial primary: Rick Lazio leads Carl Paladino 47-35. (“Tightening” may not be the right word, as this is their first look at the NY-Gov primary, but it’s what other pollsters have seen.) In the Senate special election, Joe DioGuardi leads David Malpass and Bruce Blakeman, 28-12-10. And in another sign that Democratic voters are only dimly aware that there’s an election this year, fully 77% of Dem voters have no idea who they’ll vote for in the Attorney General’s race. Kathleen Rice leads Eric Schneiderman by a margin of 4-3. (That’s not a typo.)

• WI-Sen: Ron Johnson has been outspending Russ Feingold 3-to-1 on the TV airwaves, which goes a long way to explaining why this is a tied race, but that may not matter much if he keeps stepping on his own free-market-fundamentalist message. Johnson found himself, in a recent radio interview, tying himself into knots by praising Communist China for having a more favorable investment climate for business than America, in part because of its “certainty.” So, let’s see… to stop America’s descent into socialism, we need to become more like the Communists, because the path to freedom is actually through the kind of “certainty” that comes from a command economy? Finally, this is probably too little too late, but Terence Wall, the guy who dropped out in a huff from the GOP field after the state convention, is now publicly touting the idea of a write-in campaign in the upcoming primary. I don’t know if he actually thinks he has a shot against a stumbling Johnson or is just engaged in some last-minute sour grapes.

• WV-Sen: Joe Manchin continues to rake in the bucks in the West Virginia Senate special election. (Facing self-funding John Raese, the money issue is the main threat to Manchin… well, that, and the perilously low approvals for national Dems here.) He reported raising $393K last week, bringing his total to $1.5 million. Raese reported $717K, but $520K of that was self-funded, with only $22K from donors.

• AZ-Gov: This may not get much press in the wake of her amazing debate performance, but Jan Brewer is also engaged in an interesting strategy of retaliation, pulling her campaign ads off the local CBS affiliate, whose news department dared to question Brewer’s relationship with a key advisor who’s also connected to private prison company Corrections Corporation of America, which stands to make significant money incarcerating illegal immigrants rounded up under Arizona’s SB 1070. That’s not the same station whose reporter aggressively questioned Brewer post-debate last night… my advice to Brewer would be to go ahead and stop advertising on all local network affiliates as punishment. That’ll show ’em!

• CO-Gov: This may be kind of repetitive, but Dan Maes again turned down calls to drop out of the race today, after former state Senate president John Andrews withdrew his endorsement and told him to get out. Andrews wasn’t alone in the endorsement rescinding department: it looks like the whole ooops-no-I-actually-wasn’t-an-undercover-cop-in-Kansas thing was the fridge too far for former GOP Senator Hank Brown, who is now saying he’s “looking around” for a new candidate. Meanwhile, on the touchy subject of water law, maybe Maes should take a page from Scott McInnis and just plagiarize all his work on the subject, as at least that way he wouldn’t appear completely ignorant of the law. He just introduced an entirely new water law doctrine with his proclamation that “If it starts in Colorado, it’s our water” – ignoring the 7-state compact on use of Colorado River water and the whole concept of prior appropriation. As much as I’d like to see Jan Brewer using the Arizona National Guard to invade Colorado and reclaim its water, I don’t think the courts would let it get to that point.  

• FL-Gov: Alex Sink is expanding her current TV advertising buy, throwing another $600K into keeping her introductory spot on the air in a number of non-Miami markets. Oddly, Rick Scott has been taking the week off since the primary, at least from advertising.

• OR-Gov: John Kitzhaber has finally decided to go negative on Chris Dudley… it might be too little too late, but at least he’s recognizing what he needs to do (as recently as last week, he negged a DGA ad that went negative on Dudley… and this is the first time he’s aired a negative ad since 1994). The ad attacks Dudley for having “never managed anything” and never “shown much interest in Oregon” before (as seen in his decision to live in income-tax-free Washington while playing for the Trail Blazers).

• CT-04: Republican state Sen. Dan Debicella offers up a recent internal poll, via National Research. It has him within 4 points of Rep. Jim Himes, trailing 42-38 (the same 4-point margin seen in the recent round of AAF polling).

• FL-25: Here’s an offensive opportunity for House Dems that nobody should be writing off. Joe Garcia posted a lead in a recent internal poll (taken in wake of the primary, and revelations about various unsavory moments from Republican opponent David Rivera’s past) for his campaign. Garcia leads by 4 points in the poll from Benenson, 40-36 (with 5 for the Tea Party candidate and 1 for the Whig).

• MO-03: Republican challenger Ed Martin got the endorsement of the Missouri Farm Bureau, a change from their backing of Russ Carnahan in previous cycles. Carnahan didn’t show up for his meeting with the Farm Bureau, although it’s unclear whether that’s why he didn’t get endorsed or if he felt the endorsement was already lost.

• NH-02: EMILY’s List, Planned Parenthood, and NARAL are all coordinating their efforts in favor of Ann McLane Kuster ahead of the Dem primary in the 2nd, where’s she’s running against Katrina Swett, who has supported parental notification laws. In addition to a joint rally, they’re sending out a joint mailer together.

• PA-12: The NRCC is out with a poll, via POS, of the 12th, giving Tim Burns a small lead in his rematch against special election victor Mark Critz. Burns leads 48-43, quite the reversal from Critz’s 53-45 win in May. (Bear in mind that POS’s final released poll before that election gave Burns a 2-point lead.)

• Rasmussen:

• AK-Sen: Scott McAdams (D) 44%, Joe Miller (R) 50%

• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 44%, Rick Scott (R) 45%

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D-inc) 46%, Dino Rossi (R) 48%

Public Policy Polling (8/27-29, likely voters, 6/26-27 in parens):

Lee Fisher (D): 38 (40)

Rob Portman (R): 45 (38)

Undecided: 18 (22)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

Since Ted Strickland and Lee Fisher have tended to move up and down in concert with each other in polling, it was a pretty foregone conclusion, based on yesterday’s PPP OH-Gov numbers (and also more generically on PPP’s switch to a likely voter model, and that that generates a sample that went 48-45 for John McCain in 2008), that things would have gotten worse for Fisher. They have: his 2-point lead has turned into a 7-point deficit. Fisher’s favorables are now negative at 24/32, while Portman is at 29/28.

A lot of Fisher’s problem is that many Dems (21%) are still undecided, and assuming they break his direction, that should push his numbers up. But that still isn’t enough to push him back into the lead, based on Portman’s 43-30 lead among independents.