Thursday night brings the veritable buffet of polling data, as no less than sixteen polls grace this edition of the Wrap. It is way too early to draw any conclusions about a trend or a shift in momentum, but it is hard not to notice that there is a considerably reduced amount of suck in the recent polling, on balance.
Hell, even Blanche Lincoln has drawn within 25-30 points. Hope springs eternal!
That poll, and over a dozen more, on the Thursday edition of the Wrap...
THE U.S. SENATE
AR-Sen: Good news for Lincoln--it's closer. Bad news--Still down 17
Blanche Lincoln is still virtually certain of losing her Senate seat in Arkansas in six weeks. However, she has at least bounced off of the floor, as she rises from the almost comic weakness that marked her late summer numbers and moves within twenty points of Republican nominee John Boozman. The latest poll, from Mason Dixon, puts Boozman up by seventeen points on Lincoln (51-34).
IL-Sen: Republican pollster sees Kirk lead cut in half
The midwestern GOP polling firm We Ask America raised some eyebrows last month when they claimed that Republican Mark Kirk has moved out to a six-point edge over Democrat Alexi Giannoulias. This month, the right-wing firm cut Kirk's lead in half, putting Kirk at 39% and Giannoulias at 36%. In a sign that they can play a spoiler role in November, the Green and Libertarian nominees combined for 6% of the vote.
OR-Sen: SUSA finds one Democrat in a comfortable November position
SurveyUSA has been pretty bearish on the Democrats this cycle, but they do have one Democrat in a position of considerable strength for November--incumbent Senator Ron Wyden. SUSA puts Wyden at 54% of the vote, with Republican Jim Huffman sitting on 38% of the vote. Even at that outsized margin, it would still be considerably smaller than Wyden's margin of victory in both his 1998 and 2004 re-election campaigns.
THE U.S. HOUSE
DE-AL: Dems a double-digit favorite to pick up Castle's House seat
According to PPP, Democrats head into the general election cycle with an excellent chance to pick off the House seat vacated by moderate GOP Congressman (and forced retiree, courtesy of Tuesday's primary) Mike Castle. The poll shows Democrat John Carney with a 11-point lead over Republican nominee Glen Urquhart. That margin could well widen, as Urquhart seems to be a little bit of an ass, if this film by a Democratic tracker is legit.
IA-02: GOP pollster says Loebsack in real danger in November
Add second-term Democrat David Loebsack to the stack of Democrats who may be endangered in November, if a new internal poll by Tarrance Group for her campaign is to be believed (and yes...the standard caveats apply). The survey puts Loebsack up by only single point over Republican Marianette Miller-Meeks (41-40). The pollster also has Libertarian Gary Sicard gaining 6% of the vote. Loebsack easily dispatched Miller-Meeks in 2008 (57-39).
MD-01: Dem internal puts him up mid-single digits in tough district
Another poll obtained by The Fix is much happier news for Democrats--a new Garin Hart Yang poll on behalf of freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil puts him in the lead by six points (45-39) over the man he narrowly beat in 2008--Republican CfG fave Andy Harris. Kratovil just launched an air war, and the polling memo claims that Kratovil is up double digits among those people who have seen the advertising.
MI-09: Add Peters to the target list? Unknown pollster says "yes"
I'd be mortified by this poll, except that it has a very high margin of error and it comes from a pollster that I have literally never heard of. The new poll, out today from The Rossman Group/Team Telcom, gives Republican challenger Rocky Raczkowski a narrow edge of four points (45-41) over incumbent Democrat Gary Peters. The poll only had 300 respondents, however, meaning the margin of error here is pretty high in this case.
WA-03: Heck closes gap, but still trails Republican in Dem open seat
SurveyUSA returns to southwestern Washington, and finds an incrementally closer contest than the one they found last month. Republican Jaime Herrera is still out in front of Democrat Denny Heck, but the margin is now in the single digits (52-43). That is a four-point shift from August, when SUSA had Herrera up 54-41 on Heck. The district is a swing district (carried by Obama by only a 52-46 margin), one held by Democrat Brian Baird since the 1990s.
THE GUBERNATORIAL RACES
GA-Gov: Deal discloses huge personal financial problem, clams up
Nathan Deal's finances have been the stuff of rumor, rumors that the candidate himself confirmed after an educational forum today. Deal disclosed that his auto salvage business, which he co-owns with a business partner and was the subject of a congressional ethics investigation, is in debt to a serious magnitude. Deal would not give a dollar figure, but an AP review noted that the figures was $2.85 million, spread out over two loans from two Georgia banks. Deal failed to disclose these loans in state campaign finance reports, something he deemed today as "an oversight." He also said today that he would not address his finances further, saying that his release of tax returns earlier this month ought to suffice.
MI-Gov: Two polls show little movement in gubernatorial race
Democrat Virg Bernero has been unsuccessful so far in closing the gap with Republican Rick Snyder in the open seat battle to replace Jennifer Granholm as Governor of Michigan. That is the verdict from a pair of polls released over the past 24 hours in the state. Venerable local pollsters EPIC-MRA continue to give Snyder a wide lead, with Snyder at 53% of the vote and Bernero well behind at 29%. Meanwhile, the aforementioned (and unknown) Rossman/Team Telcom combo also polled the race statewide. Again, the poll is plagued by a high MoE (only 400 respondents), but the numbers fall well within the range seen in other polls of the race. They have Snyder at 51% of the vote, with Bernero at 32%.
MN-Gov: SurveyUSA confirms tightening race in Minnesota
The University of Minnesota broke the pattern several days ago, when they showed the gubernatorial race as an absolute coinflip (previous polls had given Democrat Mark Dayton a modest lead). Late last night, SurveyUSA released their own numbers, and confirmed the UM findings. They had Dayton in the lead over Republican Tom Emmer, but it is painfully close (38-36). The most notable thing is the apparent ascendancy of Indie candidate Tom Horner, who draws 18% of the vote. Horner does the worst among conservatives, which implies that the two trends of recent vintage (a closer race between Emmer and Dayton, as well as Horner's surge) may very well be related.
NH-Gov: Lynch not as dominant as usual, but still comfortably ahead
PPP revealed their gubernatorial numbers out of the Granite State today, and they find that Democratic Governor John Lynch has a double-digit lead over Republican nominee John Stephen. However, it is a considerably tighter race than Lynch had grown accustomed to over the years. Lynch, re-elected with 70% of the vote or more in both 2006 and 2008, is leading with 51% of the vote. Stephen trails with 39% of the vote.
OH-Gov: Q poll disastrous for Dems, but is there a slight caveat?
Only rarely do I look at the demographic details of a poll to try to explain away a particularly ugly (or particularly good) data point, but this poll out today from Quinnipiac merits such treatment. The toplines have got a lot of attention today: the poll shows Republican John Kasich leading Democratic Governor Ted Strickland by a 54-37 margin. What caught my attention was the partisan breakdown. Strickland did marginally worse with Democrats than Kasich did with Republicans, but the differences were not massive. Kasich enjoyed a 23-point edge with Indies. So, how in the world did they get a seventeen-point lead overall? Clearly, there was an issue with either GOP oversampling, Democratic undersampling, or...well...both.
Applying the 2006 exit poll demographics for Ohio, the margin was halved to eight points. Even using the best GOP parameters over the last several election cycles (2004: R 40 D 35 I 25, which was a better breakdown by party than was even seen in 1994), the margin is cut to less than fourteen percentage points. Not that it is anything to write home about, but clearly, Quinnipiac is seeing the most stratified electorate by party in recent history.
OR-Gov: Dueling polls offer two different interpretations of race
Either Republican Chris Dudley has emerged with a modest lead in the Oregon Governor's race, or former Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber is clinging to a single-point edge that confirms the race as a coin flip. Those are the competing verdicts (though within the same margin of error, I suppose) of two new polls in Oregon today. The SurveyUSA poll of the state gives Dudley a 49-43 lead over Kitzhaber, propelled by a continuing deadlock between the two candidates in normally Dem-friendly Portland. Meanwhile, local pollsters Riley Research puts it at a virtual tie, with Kitzhaber at 40% of the vote and Dudley at 39%.
UT-Gov: Local pollster puts Herbert up 21 in re-election bid
A poll conducted mostly during last week, and released today, shows that Utah's Republican Governor, Gary Herbert, enjoys a 21-point advantage over Democrat Peter Corroon (52-31). What makes this potentially interesting: the poll was conducted before the burgeoning scandal involving a highway contract that was awarded to a company that had funneled $87,000 to Herbert's re-election campaign. The state had to offer an eight-figure settlement to the losing bidder on the contract after it was revealed that the state department of Transportation tweaked the scoring of the bids, which moved the contributing firm (Provo River Constructors) into the lead for the bid.
THE RAS-A-POLL-OOZA
The House of Ras continues its recent surge of data, with a quintet of new results out today. Rasmussen follows other recent pollsters in moving Patty Murray out to a modest lead, and they also break normal Ras form in being the best pollster for Rory Reid in a long time (don't get too excited--he is still down double digits).
DE-Sen: Chris Coons (D) 52%, Christine O'Donnell (R) 41%
NV-Gov: Brian Sandoval (R) 52%, Rory Reid (D) 39%
NH-Sen: Kelly Ayotte (R) 51%, Paul Hodes (D) 44%
PA-Gov: Tom Corbett (R) 49%, Dan Onorato (D) 39%
WA-Sen: Sen. Patty Murray (D) 51%, Dino Rossi (R) 46%
