Tag: Poll

Dr. Bill Durston, a progressive Democrat running for Congress in California’s 3rd Congressional District has just released a poll that shows that he is in a dead heat against the Republican incumbent, Dan Lungren.

From an email sent to Durston for Congress supporters on Tuesday, October 7th:

We’ve just received great news from a poll of 500 likely voters conducted by the respected polling firm, Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, and Associates. Dr. Bill Durston is in a statistical dead heat with Dan Lungren in California’s 3rd Congressional District!

When voters were asked who they would vote for if they were to vote today, 33% chose Lungren, 30%, chose Bill, 7% chose another candidate, and 30% were undecided. With a margin of error of 4%, the differences between Bill and Lungren were not statistically significant.

After hearing a positive profile about both Lungren and Bill, the tallies were even closer – 39% for Lungren and 38% for Bill. After hearing about some of Lungren’s many shortcomings, including his Hawaii vacation paid for by special interests, his allegiance to the Bush-Cheney administration, and his fondness for taking money from Big Oil, voters chose Bill over Lungren by a margin of 43% to 34%, a difference which is highly statistically significant.

This news should bring more attention to the race for this seat. David Dayen from the Calitics blog wrote:

This could be a good time for outside groups to jump in.  CA-03 is one of those under-the-radar seats nationwide that is very, very winnable, and a late push could easily put Durston over the top.  Furthermore, he’s a solid progressive Democrat who supports single-payer.

Once the voters of the 3rd Congressional District learn that Dr. Bill Durston is a decorated Marine combat Vietnam veteran and an emergency room physician, who has served both the country and his community, they will vote for him.  They are even more likely to vote for Bill when they learn that their current Representative, career politician and carpet-bagger Dan Lungren, cares more about the big money corporate special interests than he does about the people of his district.  

Hopefully, once the voters hear about some of Lungren’s shortcomings, Durston will take the lead.

With your help, we will prove the politicos wrong and put Bill Durston into office!

SurveyUSA (9/30-10/1, likely voters, no trendlines):

Christine Jennings (D): 33

Vern Buchanan (R-inc): 49

Jan Schneider (I): 9

Don Baldauf (I): 3

Undecided: 6

(MoE: ±4.1%)

Polling has been all over the place in FL-13 just in the past month. First good old Vern released an internal that had him up 18. Then Jennings responded with her own showing her back just four. Research 2000 neatly split the difference, calling it a twelve-point race. Neither the R2K nor Jennings polls, though, included Democrat-turned-crybaby Jan Schneider, a three-time loser who seems to be digging her loser’s share directly out of Jennings’s hide.

Vern also poaches Dems directly. He scores a strong 76-11 among members of his own party, while Jennings takes just 62-19 from Dems. And he cleans up with indies, 43-25. Jennings has an extremely tough row to hoe in this district.

The one thing that stands out is at this point old hat for SUSA: voters 18 to 34 are Vern’s best demographic, favoring him by a 57-31 split. I know the preference for Republicans among young voters in SUSA polls has struck SSPers of all stripes as odd if not completely off-base. But perhaps SUSA sees something the rest of us haven’t.

A little history lesson may be in order here. I’ve been reading Rick Perlstein’s utterly awesome Nixonland, which I can’t recommend highly enough. He recounts that when the franchise was extended to 18-to-21-year-olds before the 1972 election, Democrats were convinced that this would be of huge benefit to them. After all, young people had been on the vanguard of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements and surely despised Tricky Dick. Yet Nixon managed to split the youth vote en route to a massive landslide.

Now obviously, the differences between 2008 and 1972 are too many to count, not least that many Democrats back then completely misunderstood Nixon’s appeal. But either SUSA has made a huge mistake with its likely voter screen, or they’ve correctly identified trends among younger voters this year that most other pollsters have missed. We’ll see.

The Rick Noriega campaign has sent out a fundraising email citing a recent poll that shows him trailing the incumbent Big John Cornyn by only 2%, among adults and with a large undecided vote.

more below the fold

Link to the source:

http://www.texaslyceum.org/med…

Freshman U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, leads Democratic challenger Rick Noriega in the poll, but the margin is slim and a large number of voters haven’t made up their minds. Cornyn had the support of 38% of the likely voters in the survey, to Noriega’s 36%, with 24% saying they’re not committed to either candidate.

Oh, you were probably wondering about that other race, too.

Republican John McCain would beat Democrat Barack Obama in Texas if the race were held now. But a significant number of Texans said they haven’t picked a favorite yet. Among likely voters, McCain had the support of 43% of those polled to 38% for Obama. Libertarian Bob Barr and independent Ralph Nader had about 1% each. One of every six voters – 17% – said they haven’t decided who will get their vote in November.

Obviously they didn’t lean on the leaners, but that’s O.K. with me this early in the campaign. (It’s from June 12-20, with 1,000 respondents, 8 of 10 said they were registered to vote.)

I’m really excited to see so many voters with an open mind on this race. Lessee, now all Noriega needs is $20 million for a massive media effort. He just might get the money. A poll that shows him trailing by only two points and Obama within five, that makes Texas a real battleground state.

It’s only one poll, I know, I know. But I like it!

Rasmussen is showing some good news for Democrats in North Carolina – both Richard Moore and Beverly Purdue are leading Republican Pat McCrory by 4-5%.

North Carolina Gubernatorial Election
Richard Moore (D)	39%
Pat McCrory (R)	34%

North Carolina Gubernatorial Election
Beverly Perdue (D)	42%
Pat McCrory (R)	38%

This shows improvement over December’s poll:

In December, McCrory on top in both match-ups by an identical 42% to 39% margin. That survey was conducted prior to McCrory’s official announcement to run in the election.

Anyone here know how reapportionment works in North Carolina? If we maintain our hold on the Governor’s mansion and the state legislature, can we squeeze an advantage here after the 2010 Census?

Whoa. The latest poll from SurveyUSA on the GOP presidential primary race in California shows Giulani’s lead having shrunk from 20% last month to just 2% a mere 5 days after Fred Thompson’s announcement on Jay Leno. If Thompson can pick off California, we could be moving a lot closer to a deadlocked GOP convention.

Obviously, this is just one poll, and it could be an outlier. All of us regular SSP readers know better than to jump to conclusions just yet. But to go from a 20% lead to a 2% lead with a 4.4% MOE strongly suggests something big could be going on here.

Crosstab analysis below the flip.

Thompson leads by 4% with men, but trails 12% with women. The partisan breakdown by gender is huge here: 63% of the likely GOP primary voters were men. Thompson remained completely flat with women since last month, while Romney gained 8% among women.

Among conservatives (58%), Thompson beats Giuliani 31% to 22% (with McCain and Romney trailing at 17% and 16% respectively). Moderates (33%) strongly go for Giuliani (40%). Thompson gains 8% with conservatives.

Blacks (3%) preferred Thompson to Giuliani 35% to 23%. Thompson gains 20% here, more than double his previous numbers.

Thompson leads by 1% among a crucial GOP voter segment, complete idiots people who think Global Warming is made-up, whereas more sensible GOP voters (relatively speaking here) prefer Giuliani by 5%.

76% of likely GOP voters oppose gay marriage, and they prefer Thompson by 1%

Gun owners prefer Thompson by 2%, the gunless go for Rudy by 7%.

Young voters prefer Rudy, and increasing agge correlates with increasing preference for Thompson.

Here’s a really odd one. Giuliani leads among Bush voters (85%) by 2%. Thompson leads among Kerry voters (7%) by 3%. However, those who think Bush is one of the Greatest American Presidents (26%) prefer Thompson by 2%, and those who think he is one of the worst (18%) prefer Giuliani by 6%.

So, why do we care? If Thompson wins CA and the South, and Romney wins the Mountain West, eastern New England, and gives a strong showing in the Midwest (winning IA, MI, and perhaps some of the Great Plains states), and Giuliani does his thing in the Mid-Atlantic, Illinois, and Swing States like FL, MO, OH, and CO, then we could be headed for a deadlocked contest that goes to the convention for a resolution. This would force the GOP candidates to spend money on the primaries rather than saving for the General election. It would also increase the chances of the GOP’s weakest candidate, Mitt Romney, getting nominated and then crushed by the Democratic nominee in the general.

Just how far has John McCain’s stock fallen? According to a recent Rocky Mountain poll, he could face double digit defeat… in 2010. Yeah, even in Arizona, his home state, his popularity is less than 50%. The Rocky Mountain poll has popular Governor Janet Napolitano beating him 47% to 36% head-to-head. Napolitano is popular (59%), and could help downticket Democrats with a strong showing. McCain, on the other hand, is tied to an unpopular war, an unpopular immigration bill, and a really lousy attendance record.

Is it any wonder that McCain only leads by 9% in his home state’s GOP presidential primary? I’m glad he’s still in the race, because every dollar he spends is GOP donor money gone splendidly to waste.

(h/t Pollster.com – about 6 days old but I was on vacation and no one else diaried about it)

UPDATE: I guess that’s why McCain’s considering applying for public financing. The 100 million dollars he had planned to raise didn’t come through, so now he’ll probably take 6 million in federal funds just so he retire his debt. Anyone else think he’ll save some of the money he raises from here on out to protect his Senate seat in 2010?

[Napolitano] was ranked as doing an excellent or good job by 59 percent of those asked, and only nine percent gave her a poor or very poor rating.

The poll found that 76 percent of Democrats think she’s doing an excellent or good job, while 51 percent of independents and 41 percent of Republicans give her that ranking.

In a hypothetical head-to-head race for McCain’s Senate seat, 47 percent of those polled would vote for Napolitano, 36 percent for the sitting Republican senator, and 17 percent were undecided.

The poll, conducted by the Behavior Research Center of Arizona, was conducted between July 27 and Aug. 4 and has a margin of error of 3.9 percent.

Credit: AP, Aug. 21, 2007