David Weprin
Siena (PDF) (8/3-8, likely voters, no trendlines):
David Weprin (D): 48
Bob Turner (R): 42
Undecided: 9
(MoE: ±4.4%)
These numbers are certainly closer than I would have expected, but (and there's always a but) there are a few things worth pointing out. For starters, Turner scored 40 percent last year and is now at 42—not really a huge improvement. Yes, last year was a wave, but Turner was also going up against a well-known incumbent who, at least at the time, was pretty popular.
If you look at the crosstabs (PDF), you'll see that there are more undecided Democrats than Republicans (9 percent to 6 percent), something else which does not help Turner. Dems also only support Weprin at a 61-30 rate, which is either good or bad depending upon how you slice it. One approach is the "do you really think" camp, as in, "Do you really think only 60 percent of Democrats will vote for Weprin?" (This comes up, for instance, with black voters in PPP's VA-Sen cross-tabs.)
On the flipside, 30 percent of Dems saying they'll vote GOP is quite high, and that certainly doesn't look good for Weprin. But does Bob Turner really have such unusual cross-over appeal? Is the district's conservative-in-some-strange-ways bent really that powerful? I have to wonder. On the bread-and-butter questions of the day, it sure doesn't look very right-wing. Respondents oppose cutting Medicare and Social Security to reduce the deficit by a huge 72-24 margin, and they favor raising taxes on people earning over $250K by 65-33. Thus it makes sense that Weprin is focusing on these areas intently.
And as for the topic that so many pundits want to insist is #1, well … Siena didn't include "Israel" as such on its list when asking which issue is most important to voters, but they did offer "Peace in the Middle East." That came in dead last, at 5 percent, behind jobs (45), the federal budget deficit (21), healthcare (13), taxes (7) and America's military involvement overseas (6). So if there's some path to victory for Turner by wooing Israel hawks who otherwise vote Democratic, I'm just not seeing it. While this race looks tighter than we'd like, it simply isn't clear to me how Turner can get to 50 percent +1.