Tag: Polls

• AR-Sen: The Bill Halter campaign is looking for last minute phonebanking help to seal the deal. And you can do it from the comfort of your own home.

• CA-Sen, CA-Gov (pdf): The Senate GOP primary portion of the Field Poll came out over the weekend, and it’s right in line with the various other pollsters finding a last-minute Carly Fiorina surge into a double-digit lead. She leads Tom Campbell and Chuck DeVore 37-22-19. (Campbell led 28-22-9 in the previous Field poll in March.) Also, it looks like Campbell’s last-minute ad pitch, centered around his electability, may fall on deaf ears: 42% of primary voters think that Fiorina has the best chance of beating Barbara Boxer, while 22% think that Campbell does (and 12% think that Chuck DeVore does — which is also about the same percentage of Californians who believe there is a 1,000 foot high pyramid in Greenland). There are also primary polls out from Republican pollster Magellan (who don’t have a horse in this race), who find things even worse for Campbell: they have Fiorina leading Campbell and DeVore 54-19-16. They also give a big edge to fellow rich person Meg Whitman in the gubernatorial race; she leads Steve Poizner 64-22. The unfortunate moral of the story here: have a lot of money.

• DE-Sen: New Castle Co. Exec Chris Coons is pre-emptively getting ahead of Republican charges that he raised taxes, by, instead of hiding under the bed like conventional wisdom dictates, saying ‘guilty as charged’ and explaining how it helped. The county wound up with a AAA bond rating and a eight-digit surplus. Coons also previewed one of his lines of attack against Mike Castle: Castle’s role in deregulating the banking sector.

• FL-Sen: As Charlie Crist rebuilds his team from scratch, he’s rolling out a new media team that’s heavy on the Democratic ties. Most prominently, Chuck Schumer’s former chief of staff, Josh Isay, will be Crist’s lead media person. Isay’s firm SKD Knickerbocker may be best-known for helping out other moderate independents, like Joe Lieberman and Michael Bloomberg. One of the fires that Isay will have to put out as soon as he gets in the building, though, is what to do about the Jim Greer situation. Greer’s lawyer is saying that Crist gave the initial OK on Greer’s fundraising workaround which avoided usual party channels (which Greer allegedly turned into a scheme for filling his own pockets).

• IL-Sen: Rep. Mark Kirk’s very, very bad week last week just seems to be spilling over into this week. There are allegations popping up that he fibbed on getting shot at in Afghanistan too, and also evidence that he made a lot of stuff up while talking off the cuff about the Somalia situation last year. Taking a page from Richard Blumenthal, late last week he finally dropped the playing offense against the charges and instead went to the Chicago Tribune’s e-board to say “I’m sorry” — but that apology comes after letting the story fester all week.

• NH-Sen: After a year and a half of having the Democratic primary to himself, there are hints that Rep. Paul Hodes might get some late-in-the-game company. Mark Connolly, the former head of the state’s Securities Division who resigned to become a whistleblower in the wake of the Financial Resources Mortgage coverup (the same one that’ll have Kelly Ayotte testifying before the state legislature soon), expressed some interest and said “he’s angry enough to do it.” (Looks like a common theme this year.) Speaking of Ayotte, it sounds like she doesn’t know how to read a poll: she says she won’t take drilling for oil off New Hampshire’s tiny coastline “off the table.”

• WA-Sen: You might remember from last week that the Univ. of Washington engaged in some methodologically weird stuff by adding an extra week’s worth of samples on the end of their already-released poll and re-releasing the numbers (which were nevertheless unchanged, at Patty Murray 44, Dino Rossi 40). Well, now they’re re-releasing the poll yet again with even more samples, with changed toplines and with specific numbers for that tiny extra sample for the days May 24-28 (following Rossi’s official announcement). The number that’s getting all the press is that Rossi led Murray 42-39 in that batch, although that’s only based on 221 likely voters with a margin of error of 6.6%, so its usefulness is, well, questionable. Their full numbers are now 42-40 for Murray for the entire RV sample and 46-40 for Murray for the entire LV sample (i.e. those who voted in 2006), and she leads Generic R 44-39 among RVs (and 46-41 in the May 24-28 sample), but this poll has gotten so methodologically convoluted I’m not really sure it’s worth much of anything at this point.

Murray got some good news today in the form of an endorsement, and it’s not from a human but a corporation: Boeing. While she’s received plenty of Boeing money in the past, I’m not aware of Boeing ever having explicitly endorsed her or anyone else before (although anyone with a pulse knows that Murray has taken over for Scoop Jackson as the “Senator from Boeing”). Frankly, in the state of Washington, this is a bigger endorsement than any human politician’s endorsement would be, considering the way Boeing’s tendrils reach so much of the state. Finally, the field of miscellaneous Republicans kept shrinking today, as chiropractor Sean Salazar (probably the first guy to try to grab the teabagger mantle here, although he got shoved over by Clint Didier) bailed out of the race and backed Rossi.

• WI-Sen: Here’s a strange vulnerability for Ron Johnson in the Wisconsin Senate race: his fixation on opposing bipartisan Wisconsin state legislation making it easier for victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue their abusers. That’ll require some explanation, and I assume it’ll be something other than his current explanation, that such legislation would only lead to more victims of sexual abuse by making organizations likelier to sweep it under the carpet.

• IA-Gov: After endorsing a variety of misspelled odds-and-ends last week (“Cecil Bledsoe,” “Angela McGowen,” and Joe Miller), Sarah Palin went with a big gun this weekend, and it was one who doesn’t match her carefully cultivated teabagging/religious right image at all: establishment retread Terry Branstad in Iowa. Is she counting on getting repaid by Branstad in the 2012 caucuses, if she decides to give up the grifting lifestyle and take the huge pay cut associated with running for President? (Branstad also has the backing of Mitt Romney, who seems more of a kindred spirit for him.)

• MI-Gov: The Schwarz is not with us after all. Joe Schwarz, the moderate ex-Rep. who got bounced from MI-07 in 2006 in the GOP primary by Tim Walberg, has decided against pursuing the independent bid in the Governor’s race that he’d been threatening. On the surface, the loss of a center-right indie looks like bad news for the Dems, but depending on which two candidates match up in November, Schwarz could just have easily pulled more left-of-center votes… and in all likelihood, he wasn’t going to rack up more than a few percent anyway.

• NY-Gov: In their standoff with Democratic nominee Andrew Cuomo, the Working Families Party seems to have blinked first. They went ahead and nominated placeholders in the Governor, Lt. Gov, and AG slots, presumably to allow coordination with the Dem choices later. Cuomo had been leaning hard on the WFP to do so. The person most affected by this is state Sen. Eric Schneiderman, a Cuomo foe who had been considered the most likely WFP candidate for AG; instead, the WFP may wind up going with Nassau Co. DA Kathleen Rice, who’s Cuomo’s preferred AG for his informal “ticket.”

• TX-Gov: The Greens are actually going to be on the ballot in Texas this year, for the gubernatorial race? I’m as surprised as you are, but it’s less surprising when you find out who’s behind it: Arizona Republican consultant Tim Mooney, who set up the petition drive to get them on the ballot (and who’s also a veteran of the 2004 efforts to get Ralph Nader on as many states’ ballots as possible). GOP incumbent Rick Perry faces a tough race from Dem former Houston mayor Bill White, and he can have a little breathing room if the Greens siphon off a few lefties.

• AR-01: Chad Causey has an interesting argument for Democratic runoff voters in the 1st not to vote for ex-state Sen. Tim Wooldridge: he’s likely to bolt for the Republican Party at his earliest convenience. Causey’s evidence for the flight risk posed by Wooldridge includes his very conservative voting record in the state legislature, starting with his pro-public hanging legislation. Wooldridge, for his part, said he’d never switch. The Wooldridge camp is also offering up an internal poll (no word on the pollster) claiming a 48-24 lead over Causey in the runoff.

• CA-19: SurveyUSA has one last poll of the race in the 19th’s GOP primary, which they’ve polled exhaustively (and found almost exactly the same thing each time). However, this time it’s a little more interesting: there seems to be some late movement to former Fresno mayor Jim Patterson, who now leads state Sen. Jeff Denham 34-30. Ex-Rep. Richard Pombo is back at 17, with Larry Westerlund at 8. On the Dem side, it’s a 26-26 tie between Loraine Goodwin and Les Marsden.

• MN-06: What started out as a thorny three-way primary (when Elwyn Tinklenberg was in the race) has turned into a walk for Democratic state Sen. Tarryl Clark. Maureen Reed, a physician and former Independence Party Lt. Gov. candidate, ended her bid and endorsed Clark against Rep. Michele Bachmann. Reed had done surprisingly well at fundraising, but didn’t have the institutional advantages that Clark did, especially once Clark got the DFL endorsement. Clark still has an uphill fight against Bachmann, who’s insulated against likely future foot-in-mouth incidents by the district’s reddish lean as well as a huge war chest.

• TN-08: A Hill piece on the possibility of another NRCC-touted candidate (in the form of Stephen Fincher) going down in flames actually has some nice dirt on all three Republicans contesting the primary in the 8th. Fincher, of course, is widely noted for his hypocrisy on attacking the federal government while receiving millions in farm subsidies, but it’s also been revealed that he has voted in three Democratic primaries in the last eight years, “used virtually the same TV ad as a candidate for Alabama Agriculture Commisioner” (I have to assume it was an ad from one of the “thugs,” since if he’d riiiiiiipped off Dale Peterson’s ad, the whole blogosphere would already know about it by now), and perhaps most pathetically, misspelled “Tennessee” in a mailer. His challengers, Ron Kirkland and George Flinn, have their own troubles; Kirkland contributed to outgoing Democratic Rep. John Tanner in 2000 and 2004, while Flinn tried to cover up a lawsuit by a contractor who wasn’t paid for remodeling work.

Public Policy Polling (6/5-6, likely voters, 5/22-23 in parens):

Nikki Haley (R): 43 (39)

Henry McMaster (R): 16 (18)

Gresham Barrett (R): 23 (16)

Andre Bauer (R): 12 (13)

Undecided: 7 (14)

(MoE: ±3.1%)

Runoffs:

Nikki Haley (R): 51

Gresham Barrett (R): 35

Undecided: 14

Nikki Haley (R): 62

Andre Bauer (R): 26

Undecided: 12

Nikki Haley (R): 54

Henry McMaster (R): 35

Undecided: 12

(MoE: ±3.1%)

It looks like Haley’s standing has not been impaired by the allegations of extramarital infidelity that have dominated the headlines this week. Her favorable rating among Republican primary voters sits at 58-23, an improvement over the 42-13 rating she had in late May. Moreover, by a 54-13 margin, Republicans don’t believe the allegations are true, and are split almost evenly on whether she should drop out of the race if the allegations are proven true.

We should also give thanks to PPP for taking a look at the 4th CD primary, where conservative GOP incumbent Bob Inglis is being teabagged to death:

Bob Inglis (R-inc): 33

Trey Gowdy (R): 37

Jim Lee (R): 9

David Thomas (R): 9

Christina Jeffrey (R): 5

Undecided: 7

(MoE: ±5.7%)

Despite a thoroughly conservative voting record, Inglis has committed a long list of verbal apostasies against the Glenn Beck wing of the Republican Party, and it seems that his occasionally moderate-sounding style is costing him big time among his party’s base. I think it’s worth revisiting one of the most astute pieces of analysis I’ve ever read on SSP, from a post by DavidNYC predicting Parker Griffith’s demise back in December:

It’s important to remember that to remain a member in good standing of the conservative movement, it isn’t enough just to vote a certain way. You have to evidence a very particular tribal belonging – you need to hate the right people, be ignorant of the right facts, be fearful of the right bogeymen, and be arrogant about the whole enterprise. If you somehow fail this tribal litmus test, it doesn’t matter how right-wing you are – that’s how, for example, a wildly conservative guy like former Rep. Chris Cannon could lose a primary to another wildly conservative maniac.

CT-Gov (6/1, likely voters, 5/4 in parens):

Ned Lamont (D): 36 (42)

Thomas Foley (R): 38 (45)

Ned Lamont (D): 43 (48)

Michael Fedele (R): 34 (28)

Dan Malloy (D): 44 (38)

Thomas Foley (R): 35 (35)

Dan Malloy (D): 42 (44)

Michael Fedele (R): 28 (27)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

CT-Sen (6/1, likely voters, 5/18 in parens):

Richard Blumenthal (D): 56 (48)

Linda McMahon (R): 33 (45)

Richard Blumenthal (D): 55 (53)

Peter Schiff (R): 32 (37)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

IN-Sen (6/2-3, likely voters, 5/5-6 in parens):

Brad Ellsworth (D): 33 (36)

Dan Coats (R): 47 (51)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

MO-Sen (6/2, likely voters, 5/3 in parens):

Robin Carnahan (D): 44 (42)

Roy Blunt (R): 45 (50)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

NH-Gov (5/26, likely voters, 4/7 in parens):

John Lynch (D-inc): 47 (47)

John Stephen (R): 35 (37)

John Lynch (D-inc): 50 (55)

Jack Kimball (R): 31 (34)

John Lynch (D-inc): 51 (50)

Karen Testerman (R): 32 (33)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

NM-Gov (6/3, likely voters, 5/25 in parens):

Diane Denish (D): 42 (43)

Susana Martinez (R): 44 (42)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

PA-Gov (6/2, likely voters, 5/19 in parens):

Dan Onorato (D): 33 (36)

Tom Corbett (R): 49 (49)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

PA-Sen (6/2, likely voters, 5/19 in parens):

Joe Sestak (D): 38 (46)

Pat Toomey (R): 45 (42)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

RI-Gov (5/27, likely voters, 4/21 in parens):

Frank Caprio (D): 32 (33)

John Robitaille (R): 25 (21)

Lincoln Chafee (I): 35 (33)

Patrick Lynch (D): 19 (24)

John Robitaille (R): 29 (26)

Lincoln Chafee (I): 37 (35)

Patrick Lynch (D): 24

Victor Moffitt (R): 28

Lincoln Chafee (I): 35

Frank Caprio (D): 35

Victor Moffitt (R): 22

Lincoln Chafee (I): 33

(MoE: ±4.5%)

SD-AL (5/27, likely voters, 4/21 in parens):

Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-inc): 47 (45)

Chris Nelson (R): 43 (41)

Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-inc): 46 (50)

Kristi Noem (R): 43 (35)

Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-inc): 48 (48)

Blake Curd (R): 41 (36)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

• AR-Sen: I don’t know if this is outright shenanigans or innocent bureaucratic bungling, but a lot of eyebrows are being raised over a strange turn of events in Garland County that’s going to lead to long lines and voters avoiding the polls. The county, with a population of 80,000 and 42 precincts, will have a total of two polling places for the upcoming runoff election. Worth noting: Garland County (home of Hot Springs) is the most populous county in Arkansas that went for Bill Halter in the primary.

• IL-Sen: The Mark Kirk story seems like it’s finally catching hold in the Chicago market. At the link, you can check out the whole “misremembered it wrong” story splashed across the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times, and watch a withering WGN news story.

• WA-Sen: Dino Rossi has reported $600K in contributions in one week since announcing his bid. Anyone who is surprised by this number should get better acquainted with the term “low hanging fruit;” the interesting numbers will be the ones in future weeks to see how he does now that most of Washington’s major real estate and contracting players have, assumedly, maxed out. Also in the not-surprising file, state Sen. Don Benton dropped out of the race and endorsed Rossi. Benton was the more or less GOP frontrunner prior to Rossi’s entry, but also something of a Republican-establishment stand-in for Rossi with a lot of overlap in supporters, so there wasn’t much incentive for him to continue. Goldy correctly yawns at Benton’s departure, saying that Clint Didier (the Palin-endorsed teabagger in the race) was always the real speed bump for Rossi and one that’ll continue to pose a problem: he can’t run away from Didier and his supporters, whose enthusiasm he’ll need in November, but if he gets too close to them, he’ll lose whatever moderate image he once had, which he’ll also need in November.

• CA-Gov (pdf): The last pre-primary Field Poll, or at least part of it, is out. All that they’ve released today is the Republican gubernatorial primary numbers, which are very much in line with everyone else’s numbers lately. They see Meg Whitman leading Steve Poizner 51-25, only half the 49-point lead she had in the last Field Poll in March but still certainly enough to get the job done for her on Tuesday. Keep your eyes peeled for the rest of the data.

• NY-Gov: Maggie Haberman has an interesting retrospective of the big bag of Fail that was the Steve Levy campaign. She weaves together a number of threads that didn’t really make it into the national media — unwillingness to fully commit to the race, his reluctance to dip into his war chest, tabloid stories about law school friends — to paint a picture of a campaign that, in hindsight, was doomed from the outset.

• AR-03: Sarah Palin (and the Susan B. Anthony List) weighed in in AR-03, adding one more “Mama Grizzly” to her trophy room. She endorsed state Sen. Cecile Bledsoe, who’s in a runoff against Rogers mayor Steve Womack for the GOP nomination in the open seat race in this safely-red district. Bledsoe only compiled about 15% of the vote in the primary, although with a huge number of candidates, that was enough to squeak by into second place.

• NY-15: In case there was any doubt that a combination of age, sliminess, and having lost his Ways and Means gavel might prompt a last-minute retirement for Charles Rangel, they were laid to rest. He’ll be officially kicking off his next campaign this weekend.

• OH-18: The long-unresolved GOP primary in the 18th appears to be finally over, as former state Agriculture director and 2008 nominee Fred Dailey conceded. He lost to establishment pick state Sen. Bob Gibbs by 156 votes according to certified results, and the automatic recount only changed two votes. While this is one more in a string of recent GOP primaries where the establishment candidate beat the teabagger, this, like many of those races (like, say, IN-08 and IN-09, and IN-03 and IN-05 if you want to call the woeful Souder and Burton “establishment”) where the anti-establishment candidate came within a hair of winning, and where if there had been fewer teabagger candidates spoiling the broth or things that just bounced slightly differently, the media would be talking about an entirely different narrative.

• Media: So, speaking of media narratives, I’m wondering if the media are starting to dial down their “Dems are dooooomed!” narrative that’s been conventional wisdom for the last half a year. Not just because they may be noticing that the polling evidence for that is sketchy at best, but also, as this Newsweek piece points out, that they may have gotten suckered by the Democrats themselves, who seem to be engaged in the ages-old practices of expectations management, lowballing their predictions so they look like heroes later.

• Ideology: 538 has some fascinating charts up as part of a new post on where states (and where the two parties within each state) fit on the liberal/conservative scale, looking at it on multiple dimensions instead of on a left/right line. West Virginia (socially conservative and economically liberal) stands out as an interesting outlier on the chart, which does a lot to explain its particular brand of politics.

Research 2000 (6/2-4, likely voters, 5/24-26 in parens):

Blanche Lincoln (D-inc): 45 (44)

Bill Halter (D): 49 (47)

Undecided: 6 (9)

(MoE: ±4%)

One caveat here is that this sample claims that they voted for Halter over Lincoln by a 48-46 margin (with 3% for D.C. Morrison and another 3% who didn’t vote) in the first round of voting. Lincoln, as you recall, narrowly claimed a first place showing three weeks ago. However, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see enthusiasm among Lincoln voters dimming (especially after witnessing her sadsack runoff campaign), so these numbers may not be out to lunch at all.

DailyKos decided to take a pass on polling the general election match-ups this time, but that will be the next hot topic after Tuesday.

Suffolk University (6/1-2, likely voters, no trend lines):

Sharron Angle (R): 33

Danny Tarkanian (R): 26

Sue Lowden (R): 25

Undecided: 7

Other: 10

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (5/31-6/2, likely voters, 4/26-28 in parens):

Sharon Angle (R): 34 (13)

Sue Lowden (R): 25 (38)

Danny Tarkanian (R): 24 (28)

Undecided: 5 (9)

Other: 12 (12)

(MoE: ±5%)

Wow — Sharron Angle appears to be packing her Dirty Harry Hand Cannon and aroma-therapeutic massage oils all the way to a remarkable victory, if these polls are to be believed. Recall that Angle, a wild-eyed Club for Growth-backed whacko, was last seen washing out of the primary race to replace now-Gov. Jim Gibbons in the 2nd Congressional District back in 2006. Let’s just hope that Danny Tarkanian doesn’t somehow sneak through as Lowden and Angle continue to go nuclear on each other in the closing days.

Meanwhile, Sue Lowden has been scrambling to defend a burial fee for that she proposed for non-combat veterans. In a hastily-arranged press conference, Lowden repeatedly defended the tax, and even trotted out a veteran to say that the fee was okay. Uh, is this really the sort of thing that any politician wants to spend time defending? Man, I’ll almost be sorry to see her lose.

R2K also took a look at the general election, and found some of the rosiest numbers yet for Harry Reid — though that’s not really saying much:

Harry Reid (D): 43 (41)

Sharon Angle (R): 37 (44)

Scott Ashjian (TP): 2 (5)

None: 7 (2)

Other: 3 (2)

Undecided: 8 (6)

Harry Reid (D): 42 (41)

Sue Lowden (R): 38 (45)

Scott Ashjian (T): 2 (4)

None: 7 (2)

Other: 3 (2)

Undecided: 8 (6)

Harry Reid (D): 43 (41)

Danny Tarkanian (R): 39 (43)

Scott Ashjian (TP): 2 (6)

None: 6 (2)

Other: 3 (2)

Undecided: 7 (6)

(MoE: ±4%)

I’ll believe that Harry Reid is beating his Republican opponents once I see several more corroborative polls, but it can’t be denied that these clowns are actually giving Harry Reid a shot at survival.

And, finally, that darned gubernatorial race (no trend lines):

Rory Reid (D): 52

Jim Gibbons (R-inc): 31

Other: 8

Undecided: 9

Rory Reid (D): 41

Brian Sandoval (R): 51

Other: 5

Undecided: 3

Rory Reid (D): 43

Mike Montandon (R): 40

Other: 7

Undecided: 10

(MoE: ±4%)

The good news is that Rory Reid can beat somebody: namely, Jim Gibbons or maybe, possibly, if he’s lucky, Mike Montandon. The bad news is that there’s little chance of either such match-up happening. Ex-AG Brian Sandoval beats Gibbons by 48-27 in the GOP primary (with Montandon at 6) according to R2K, and Suffolk pegs the race at a nearly identical 47-25.

• CA-Sen, CA-Gov: There’s one more poll in California, courtesy of Capitol Weekly (done for them by Republican pollster Probolsky Research). They’ve polled a few times before, but they’re calling this a “tracking poll,” suggesting they’ll be putting out more numbers as we count down to the June 8 primary. At any rate, there aren’t any surprises here: they too see the Carly Fiorina surge on the Senate side: she’s at 40, compared with Tom Campbell’s 25 and Chuck DeVore’s 13. In the Governor’s race, Meg Whitman leads Steve Poizner 54-24.

The big news here, though, is that Campbell, after saying he was going dark earlier this week, apparently pulled together enough last-minute contributions for a final TV ad. His closing argument is all about electability, centering around the recent LA Times/USC poll that gave him a lead over Barbara Boxer while Fiorina trailed. A candidate making a calm, logical pitch based on quantifiable data, instead of throwing together a mish-mash of fearmongering, jingoism, and meaningless buzzwords? I think Campbell might be running in the wrong party’s primary for that kind of thing to work. Fiorina, for her part, may have some backtracking to do after her deriding Boxer’s push on climate legislation as worrying about “the weather.” Back in October, before Campbell’s entry forced herself to recast herself as a conservative, she had lots of praise for cap and trade.

• KY-Sen: Rush disses Rand Paul! No, it’s not Rush Limbaugh; it’s just plain Rush, the pioneer 70s Canadian prog-rockers. They’ve told Paul to stop using Rush’s music at his rallies and in his web ads, citing copyright violations inasmuch as Paul has simply chosen his own Free Will and not asked them for, y’know, permission. The Paul campaign has used “The Spirit of Radio” pre-rallies (and here’s how big a Rush geek he is: he’s actually quoted that song’s lyrics on the stump). There’s always been a lot of overlap between Rush fans and libertarians, not just because many of Rush’s lyrics lean that way, but also because they both have a core audience of 14-year-old boys.

• NY-Sen-B: The Senate primary, for the right to go against Kirsten Gillibrand, is turning out to be just as much of a clusterf@ck as everything else the NY GOP has done lately. The GOP convention has left them with yet one more contested primary, as Bruce Blakeman and David Malpass split the vote (a weighted 42% for Blakeman and 40% for Malpass), leaving them to fight it out in a primary. They’re still likely to be joined by Joe DioGuardi, who only got 18% (missing the 25% threshold) but who intends to petition his way on to the ballot. Remember that DioGuardi is already on the ballot on the Conservative line, though, so he’s participating in November regardless of whether he gets into, let alone wins, the primary.

• CT-Gov: Here’s one advantage to running against a rich guy in a state with public campaign financing: every time your opponent pulls out more money, more money magically appears for you, too. Dan Malloy has raised $250K in contributions, which opens the door to another $1.25 million from the state, and on top of that, he’s entitled to a $938K bonus to match Ned Lamont’s spending. On the GOP side, Michael Fedele (with a rich guy problem of his own, in the form of Tom Foley) would like to do the same thing, but doesn’t look like he can rustle up $250K in contributions by the deadline.

• AL-05: Parker Griffith apparently isn’t switching back to being a Dem after his party-switching chicanery blew up in his face; he congratulated Mo Brooks at a press conference yesterday and said he’ll vote for him in November. “I was rejected by the constituents, they did not accept me. I appreciate that because that is how America is supposed to work,” said Griffith.

• CA-36: There are some internal polls floating around out there ahead of next week’s primary in the 36th. Jane Harman’s camp has a poll out giving her a 58-17 lead over Marcy Winograd (no word on the pollster, let alone any of the details). Winograd has her own internal, with even less detail: all they’re saying is that Harman is down at 43, although their silence about Winograd’s own number is pretty telling.

• FL-19: The FEC is telling ex-Rep. Robert Wexler to give back an unspecified amount of the contributions he received for the 2010 general election — which makes sense, considering he isn’t a participant. (He left to become president of the Center for Middle East Peace, although ongoing chatter has him on track to become the next Ambassador to Israel.) Unfortunately, that means less cash that he can offload to the> DCCC or other Dems this cycle.

• HI-01: I wasn’t aware that he hadn’t already weighed in in favor of Colleen Hanabusa, since most of the rest of the local old-guard Dem establishment had, but today ex-Rep. and gubernatorial candidate Neil Abercrombie endorsed Hanabusa. He also gave a hat tip to Ed Case for getting out of the way.

• Blogosphere: The New York Times actually got something right! They’re going to be partnering with Nate Silver, bringing a relaunched 538 under the NYT’s online umbrella in August. We’re glad to see that the legacy media are realizing that not only is there serious political journalism (if not scholarship) going on in the blogosphere, but that their last gasp at relevance may be by moving in that direction. Congrats to Nate, too!

PPP (5/25-27, Michigan voters, likely voters in primary):

Virg Bernero (D): 26

Andy Dillon (D): 23

Undecided: 51

(MoE: ±5.5%)

Rick Snyder (R): 20

Peter Hoekstra (R): 19

Mike Cox(R): 17

Mike Bouchard (R): 15

Tom George (R): 9

Undecided: 20

(MoE: ±5.1%)

Virg Bernero (D): 28

Rick Snyder (R): 44

Undecided: 28

Virg Bernero (D): 34

Peter Hoekstra (R): 41

Undecided: 25

Virg Bernero (D): 36

Mike Cox (R): 38

Undecided: 27

Virg Bernero (D): 34

Mike Bouchard (R): 39

Undecided: 27

Virg Bernero (D): 31

Tom George (R): 30

Undecided: 39

Andy Dillon (D): 26

Rick Snyder (R): 46

Undecided: 28

Andy Dillon (D): 32

Peter Hoekstra (R): 41

Undecided: 27

Andy Dillon (D): 32

Mike Cox (R): 40

Undecided: 27

Andy Dillon (D): 29

Mike Bouchard (R): 38

Undecided: 33

Andy Dillon (D): 31

Tom George (R): 32

Undecided: 38

(MoE: ±3.3%)

PPP takes its first look at Michigan (whose primary isn’t until August 3); the general results don’t look that good for Democrats, but a lot of that problem is name-recognition-related. That can be seen in the high number of undecideds in the Dem primary, as well as low knowns for both state House speaker Andy Dillon (9/20) and Lansing mayor Virg Bernero (11/12). Of course, that can also be because Jennifer Granholm, at 29/61, is an anvil around any Dem’s neck. Note that Dillon’s worse favorables seem to have him polling a little worse than Bernero vis-a-vis the Republicans; they’re both in the thick of things with the lesser GOPers but in deep trouble if moderate Rick Synder survives the primary.

This is the first poll to give Bernero a lead in the Dem primary, although that’s largely because Alma Wheeler Smith’s recent dropout lets him consolidate the liberal vote. Bernero dominates among liberals, leading 38-15 there; the reason he isn’t up further is that Dillon, predictably, leads among moderates and conservatives. The GOP primary could be anyone’s game: while other pollsters have seen him surge, PPP is the first pollster to give Rick Snyder an outright lead, thanks to his dominance (relatively-speaking, given the crowd) among the state’s moderates.

EPIC-MRA for Detroit Free Press (5/22-26, likely voters, 3/28-31 in parentheses):

Andy Dillon (D): 29 (22)

Virg Bernero (D): 23 (15)

Alma Wheeler Smith (D): NA (11)

Undecided: 48 (42)

(MoE: ±>4%)

Peter Hoekstra (R): 30 (27)

Mike Cox(R): 18 (21)

Rick Snyder (R): 17 (15)

Mike Bouchard (R): 16 (13)

Tom George (R): 2 (3)

Undecided: 17 (18)

(MoE: ±>4%)

Virg Bernero (D): 28 (26)

Rick Snyder (R): 51 (42)

Undecided: 21 (32)

Virg Bernero (D): 24 (29)

Peter Hoekstra (R): 47 (42)

Undecided: 19 (29)

Virg Bernero (D): 36 (30)

Mike Cox (R): 46 (44)

Undecided: 18 (26)

Virg Bernero (D): 32 (NA)

Mike Bouchard (R): 48 (NA)

Undecided: 20 (NA)

Andy Dillon (D): 31 (30)

Rick Snyder (R): 50 (42)

Undecided: 19 (28)

Andy Dillon (D): 35 (33)

Peter Hoekstra (R): 47 (40)

Undecided: 18 (27)

Andy Dillon (D): 37 (34)

Mike Cox (R): 46 (43)

Undecided: 17 (23)

Andy Dillon (D): 33 (NA)

Mike Bouchard (R): 49 (NA)

Undecided: 18 (NA)

(MoE: ±4%)

EPIC-MRA, which polls this race most months, finds different outcomes, although with numbers in pretty much the same range as PPP: they have Dillon with a small lead in the Dem primary, and Hoekstra the top contender in the GOP primary. They also find bigger leads for the Republicans in the general; compared with two months ago, it looks a fair number of undecideds have moved in the Republican direction. One thing’s very consistent with PPP, though: they also find that Rick Snyder is not just one tough nerd, but also the toughest opponent for either Democrat come November.

• AK-Sen: Sarah Palin, fresh off her triumphant endorsements of Vaughn Ward and “Angela McGowen,” is now weighing in with an endorsement in her home state: she’s backing Joe Miller, the Christian-right GOP primary challenger to incumbent Lisa Murkowski. What’s surprising is that people are surprised today — there’s long-term bad blood between Palin and the Murkowskis (Palin, of course, beat incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the 2006 GOP primary, and was briefly considering a 2010 run against Lisa Murkowski in the primary), and Todd Palin (who presumably doesn’t do anything without running it by the Palin family head office) had already endorsed Miller and headlined fundraisers for him.

• AR-Sen: The League of Conservation Voters is taking advantage of the oil spill in the Gulf being top-of-mind for most people today, to run a pre-runoff TV spot hitting Blanche Lincoln for her support for offshore drilling and her big campaign contributions from Big Oil.

• CA-Sen: Darkness descends over Team Campbell, with the primary one week away. Short on money and financially outgunned by Carly Fiorina, Tom Campbell has pulled the plug on TV advertising (at least for now; they say they’re evaluating day-to-day what to spend on) and is relying on robocalls to drive turnout for the GOP primary. On the other hand, quixotic Democratic primary candidate Mickey Kaus is actually hitting the airwaves, and he’s running an ad that very closely mirrors a now-famous 1990 ad from Paul Wellstone… which is pretty much the only thing that Kaus has in common with Wellstone (well, that and a weird hairline).

• FL-Sen: Jim Greer, the former state party chair of the aptly-acronymed RPOF, was just arrested on six felony charges: money laundering, grand theft, fraud… you know, the basic day-to-day aspects of running a political party. It’ll be interesting to watch, as this case plays out, if there’s any blowback to either Senate candidate: Charlie Crist, who helped put former key ally Greer into place as state party chair, or Marco Rubio, who had a taste for charging things to the state party’s credit cards.

• IL-Sen: All of a sudden it seems like every time Mark Kirk plugs a leak concerning misrepresentations of his military record, another two spring up. Today, Kirk had to admit to the WaPo’s Greg Sargent that his website incorrectly identifies him as “the only member of Congress to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Kirk actually served stateside as a Naval Reservist during the Iraq War, and he says that he’s corrected the website, as what he really meant was “to serve during Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Kirk also failed to correct Joe Scarborough when he said in 2003 that Kirk had “served Americans overseas in Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Hmmm, that whole scenario sounds vaguely familiar… I wonder where the front page NYT story about this is?

• NV-Sen: There’s that old saying about when your opponent pulls out a knife, you pull out a gun… I guess the same thing’s happening in Nevada, where when Sharron Angle pulls out allegations of wrongdoing involving a campaign bus, Sue Lowden pulls out allegations of wrongdoing involving a campaign plane. Angle hitched a ride to the “Showdown in Searchlight” rally on a supporter’s private plane, and while she did reimburse the owner $67 for her share of the fuel, it turns out she needs to pay more like $7,000, for the going charter rate. Meanwhile, Lowden seems to be doing some hasty but serious-sounding damage control over the issue of the “veterans tax;” this is still in the sketchy stages, but we’ll follow it as it develops.

• PA-Sen: The Clinton job offer scandal continues to roil the Joe Sestak campaign, threatening to torpedo the Democratic candidate as he struggles to gain momentum after winning an upset in the primary!!! Oh, wait a second, I was confused… for a moment there, I thought I was actually a Beltway pundit. In reality, nobody gives a shit, and Sestak continues to consolidate post-primary support, as seen in a new DSCC-sponsored poll by Garin Hart Yang, which gives Sestak a 47-40 lead over GOPer Pat Toomey. Both candidates are similarly liked yet ill-defined: Sestak’s favorables are 34/18, while Toomey is at 30/19.

• WA-Sen: The University of Washington pollsters who released the poll several weeks ago giving Patty Murray a 44-40 edge over Dino Rossi did something unusual. They started asking Washington residents about their feelings about the Tea Party (worth a read, on its own), but they also kept asking them about Murray/Rossi and adding those voters to the previous poll’s pool. I’m not sure if that’s methodologically sound or not; on the one hand, it pushes the MoE down to a very robust 2.3%, but also pads out the sample period to a terribly long 25 days. At any rate, it doesn’t affect the toplines one bit: Murray still leads 44-40.

• AZ-Gov: Is there just a weird outbreak of Lying-itis breaking out among our nation’s politicians (or did everyone always do this, and now thanks to the Internet you can’t get away with it anymore)? Now, it’s Jan Brewer’s turn: during the fight over Arizona’s immigration law, she somehow tried to weave in her father’s death “fighting the Nazi regime in Germany” in discussing the personal attacks against her. There’s one small problem: her father was a civilian supervisor of a munitions depot during the war, and died of lung disease in 1955. Meanwhile, back in reality, one of Brewer’s GOP primary rivals, former state party chair John Munger, has decided to drop out after getting little traction in the primary. He cited fundraising issues in his decision.

• FL-Gov: Did Rick Scott think that people were just not going to notice that whole Medicare fraud thing? Having gotten stung by outside advertising hitting him on the Columbia/HCA fraud and the $1.7 billion in fines associated with it, he’s launching a defensive TV spot and website dedicated to telling his side of the story. Meanwhile, Dems might be sailing into a clusterf@ck of their very own: Bud Chiles (the son of popular Democratic ex-Gov. Lawton Chiles) is still looking into a gubernatorial run… and now seemingly considering doing it as an independent. An independent who soaks up mostly Democratic votes would pretty much be curtains for Alex Sink’s chances at winning.

• GA-Gov: Ex-Gov. Roy Barnes got a couple endorsements that should help him with the African-American vote, as he faces African-American AG Thurbert Baker in the Dem primary. Two prominent former Atlanta mayors, Andrew Young and Shirley Franklin, backed Barnes.

• ME-Gov: The most overlooked gubernatorial race in the country has its primaries next week, and it seems like even Mainers have no idea what’s going on. Pan Atlantic SMS polled the primary, but found 62% of Dems and 47% of GOPers undecided. On the Dem side, state Sen. president Libby Mitchell is at 13, with ex-AG Steve Rowe at 12, Rosa Scarcelli at 7, and Patrick McGowan at 6. On the Republican side, Les Otten is at 17, Paul LePage at 10, Peter Mills at 8, Steve Abbott at 8, Bill Beardsley at 4, Bruce Poliquin at 3, and Matt Jacobson at 2. Given the poll’s MoE of 5.7%, all we know is that pretty much any of these candidates could be the nominees. Otten just got an endorsement from one of the few Republicans who isn’t running: from state Sen. majority leader Kevin Raye.

• AR-01: In northeast Arkansas, I don’t think endorsements come any bigger than this. Bill Clinton weighed in on Chad Causey’s behalf, in the Democratic primary runoff against the more conservative Tim Wooldridge.

• CA-42: How about I just start reporting on the politicians who haven’t fudged their war records? Now it’s the turn for Rep. Gary Miller (who faces a potentially competitive teabagger primary next week). A number of bios, including his California Assembly bio, have said he served in the Army in 1967 and 1968. A news story linked from Miller’s current official website said that he “served his country during the Vietnam War.” Turns out he spent seven weeks in boot camp in 1967, at which point he was discharged for medical reasons.

• MS-01: Newly crowned GOP nominee in the 1st Alan Nunnelee gets today’s hyperbole-in-action award. On Saturday, he told a local Rotary Club gathering that what’s going on in Washington is worse than 9/11, because “What I see in Washington over the last 16 months is a more dangerous attack because it’s an attack on our freedom that’s coming from the inside.”

• NC-08: Another day, another freakout from Tim d’Annunzio. His latest antics involve dropping out of a scheduled debate against GOP runoff opponent Harold Johnson, because of, as per d’Annunzio’s usual modus operandi, “the collaboration between the Harold Johnson campaign and the news media to use partial truth, innuendo and accusations to unfairly smear me.”

• PA-10: Best wishes for a quick recovery to the GOP candidate in the 10th, Tom Marino. He’s in stable condition after being involved in a late-night head-on collision while driving back from a county GOP meeting last night.

• NY-St. Sen.: One state legislature where it’s going to be tough for the GOP to make up much ground is the New York Senate, where they’re now having to defend their fourth open seat (out of 30 total) this cycle. George Winner, who’s been in the Senate since 2004 (making him a veritable youngster by NYS Senate GOP standards), is calling it quits. His Southern Tier district centered on Elmira has a 74K to 60K GOP registration advantage, but Obama won SD-53 by a 51-47 margin.

A week before Iowa’s primary election, Public Policy Polling released a poll showing former Governor Terry Branstad leading Bob Vander Plaats 46 percent to 31 percent, with State Representative Rod Roberts well behind at 13 percent. The firm surveyed 474 “likely GOP primary voters” between May 25 and 27, and the margin of error is plus or minus 4.5 percent.  

The polling memo by Tom Jensen notes, “Branstad gets 42-68% of the vote across the ideological spectrum, but does worst against the 74% conservative majority, edging Tea Party favorite Vander Plaats by just 41-35.”

This poll supports what I’ve been thinking for months about Roberts. He is the best surrogate Branstad could have in this primary, diluting the votes of the social conservative base that doesn’t trust the former governor. If one candidate consolidated the “not Branstad” vote, the topline result would be nearly a dead heat.

If PPP’s survey is accurate, Branstad will win next Tuesday’s primary, but with the advantages he took into this race he should be getting 60 to 70 percent of the Republican vote. He’s done the job before, he will have spent more than $2 million before the primary (more than his opponents combined), and he has been advertising statewide on television and radio since the beginning of April. Roberts and Vander Plaats could manage only limited ad buys, and Vander Plaats just went up on television the day before PPP’s poll was in the field.

Iowa Independent highlighted a notable passage from PPP’s polling memo:

   Among voters that actually know who Vander Plaats is – whether they see him favorably or unfavorably – he leads Branstad 42-37. The question is if there’s enough time left for Vander Plaats to completely make up the huge gap in name recognition he began the campaign with. Seventy-nine percent of voters have an opinion of Branstad, with it breaking down positively by a 59/20 margin. Meanwhile only 66 percent have an opinion of Vander Plaats with 47 percent seeing him favorably to 19 percent unfavorably.

   There are very clear age divisions in the race. It’s tied among voters under 45, who may not even remember Branstad’s time as Governor. But he’s up 55-20 with senior citizens, who are certainly likely to remember his tenure, and that’s fueling most of his overall victory.

Vander Plaats was never going to be able to match Branstad’s spending dollar for dollar with the huge support for Branstad among Iowa’s business Republican elite. But if Vander Plaats had saved more of what he raised in 2009, he might have been able to raise his name recognition much more this spring.

As for the differences between younger and older respondents, I would think almost any Iowan over 30 remembers Branstad as governor. I suspect that this discrepancy tells us there are a lot more moderate Republicans over age 45 than under age 45. Branstad leads Vander Plaats among moderates by a huge margin in the poll. The Republican Party has grown much more conservative in the last decade or two, so younger moderates might naturally identify more with Democrats or no-party voters.

Incredibly, this is the first public poll of the Republican primary since last July, when The Iowa Republican blog commissioned a survey by Voter/Consumer research. That poll found Vander Plaats way ahead of the rest of the declared Republican candidates, with only Branstad hypothetically able to make the primary competitive.

Branstad created an exploratory committee to run for governor last October. Since then, Selzer has done two Iowa polls for the Des Moines Register, Research 2000 has done three polls for KCCI-TV, The Iowa Republican commissioned another poll in January, not to mention several Iowa polls by Rasmussen. All of those surveys tested Governor Chet Culver against his Republican challengers but not the Republican primary. The lack of polling on Branstad against Vander Plaats and Roberts is a continuing mystery to me, given how many polls have been conducted on Democratic or Republican primaries in other states. You would think that at the very least The Iowa Republican blog would want to poll the GOP primary. The fact that they haven’t suggests that last summer’s primary poll may have been intended primarily to help the people recruiting Branstad to run for governor again. Rasmussen is the most prolific pollster in the country, and has polled Republican primaries in many other states. Maybe Rasmussen really is just interested in setting a narrative rather than polling the most newsworthy races.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

P.S. PPP also polled the Iowa Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and found Roxanne Conlin way ahead with 48 percent, compared to 13 percent for Bob Krause and 8 percent for Tom Fiegen. I posted a big linkfest on the Democratic U.S. Senate primary at Bleeding Heartland.

UPDATE: PPP director Tom Jensen told me today that no one commissioned the Iowa poll PPP conducted last week. He was responding to speculation on an Iowa republican blog that a Democratic 527 group may have commissioned the PPP poll to see if their direct-mail and tv commercial attacks on Branstad are working.