Your Morning Dose of Polls
By Leon H Wolf Posted in 2006 — Comments (53) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Mason-Dixon has a new set of Senate polls that they're releasing, results as follows:
TN Senate: Corker 45, Ford 43. The last Maxon-Dixon poll had Ford leading, 43-42. It's entirely possible, then, that this is statistical noise, but this pushes Corker's poll average above Ford's. My sense at this point is that it's Corker's race to lose. The X factor in this race is Bredesen, who has entered the game late and strong for Ford. In the end, I don't think that turnout for Bredesen helps Ford in any significant degree, because a lot of Bredesen's support comes from Republicans and independents.
MT Sen: Tester 46, Burns 43. This is the second consecutive poll showing that Burns has closed the gap to less than three points. This is bad news for Tester, who will have to face a significant on-the-ground GOP advantage on election day, and the continuing partisan gravity poll of Montana. At this point, Burns is behind, but Tester is the one who needs to turn it around.
MO Sen: McCaskill 46, Talent 43. Apart from the bizarry SurveyUSA poll that we deconstructed a couple weeks ago, this is another in a long series of polls showing one candidate or the other ahead by more than 3 points. Over the last two election cycles, Missouri is the state that most pollsters have gotten wrong, and it looks like about half of them will get it wrong this year, as well.
VA Sen: Allen 47, Webb 43. Allen seems to have weathered the storm, and come out with a consistent lead of 3-5 points. In Virginia, heading into the last week of the race, Allen will be fine.
NJ Sen: Menendez 45, Kean 42. The general poll consensus now has Menendez with a 3-4 point lead. Absent some drastic movement in the last week, Kean is in trouble.
OH Sen: Brown 48, DeWine 40. DeWine's goal at this point is to get the lead down to less than 5 heading in to the weekend, which will give him a realistic shot on election day. That looks like a tall order at this point.
Rasmussen ($) also reports that Lincoln Chafee is trailing Sheldon Whitehouse, 50-42, and that Bouchard trails Stabenow by 16 in Michigan.
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http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics/2006/10/perception_can_become_r...
I have been a bit down on RCP recently, since they seem to be either rooting for a GOP loss ever since adding Ryan Sager or excessively gloomy. But, this post nails it.
Sitting out is a vote for KOS.
Is he really that unpopular in MO? I can understand the dynamic with DeWine and Santorum, but what did Talent do to turn off the MO voters?
And he'd better get an ad up and running rebutting that Michael J Fox spot.
Most of us were intrigued by the Winston memo last week showing that national "generic" House polls were under-sampling Republicans by 7 points relative to exit-poll numbers, which themselves under-predicted Republican results in elections in 2004.
If there's a similar bias in these statewide Senate polls, a Republican candidate down by less than 5% or so will probably WIN with a good GOTV effort. Senators Allen (VA) and Corker (TN) have slight leads, and will probably win, Burns is closing fast in MT, and seems to have momentum.
I'm not surprised that Senator Talent is in a close race--Missouri is a tough state, with liberal bastions in St. Louis and Kansas City, and conservative rural voters spread out over the rest of the state. Senator Talent has to do a lot of traveling and campaigning to round up enough rural voters to overcome his deficits in the cities, while McCaskill only has to fly between two cities. In 2002 (a better year for Republicans than now), Talent won a narrow victory over Jean Carnahan, a weak candidate who served in place of her posthumously elected husband. Talent does have much more money available for the final stretch--hopefully he can use it for a major ad blitz to squeak out a win, despite the deceptive demagoguing on stem cells.
There's one state not listed in the above polls--Maryland, where the Man of Steele is running a great campaign...
The bad news: Conservatism is hard to sell. The good news is that it works.
Talent comes off as boring. It doesn't help that he looks stereotypically Republican. Remember the SNL skit where they have minorities saying that they joined the Republican party, then at the end, they are surrounded by geeky-looking white guys with glasses and suits? Jim Talent looks just like one of those guys.
Another part of his problem is that he seems to be basically invisible, at least here in St. Louis. It's probably due in part to the local media pulling against any conservatives, but he doesn't seem to try much. I have heard him on the local Fox Radio affiliate, 97.1, but outside of that, not much. And I'm someone who follows politics. He also doesn't have any causes with which he is identifiable (other than putting Sudafed behind the counter at Walgreens).
So basically he needs a better PR manager, at least in my book.
One thing that caught my eye from the link is this:
REGION:
ST LOUIS COUNTY 26%
ST LOUIS SUBURBS 11%
St. Louis City and County are separate entities (the City having seceded from the County ~110 years ago). The County is part of the suburban area, so the geographics are a little suspect. If they sampled heavily in St. Louis City, which is a Democratic stronghold, that could have skewed things. The further one gets from the city, the more "reddish" the area becomes. I'm guessing they are lumping St. Louis City and County together and the rest of the suburbs separately, by area code. The city and much of St. Louis County is area code 314, the western - and probably reddest! - part of the county and St. Charles County is area code 636.
How does Michigan, three or four minutes to the north of where I sit, give Jenny Granholm grief for the economy, and, yet, Do-Nothing-Stabenow gets a clear shot to reelection? What a waste. Mike Bouchard is a class act dude, and could give Michigan another shot at a come-back.
Just as an example of how potentially off the polls are (or proof that my home state may be home to some of the least politically-astute people in the world)... according to another recent poll in Michigan, DeVos is down 9 to Granholm, whose approval ratings make President Bush's look STELLAR in comparison. I just don't see how one poll can show a candidate with an approval rating around 35%, yet, in the same breath, another poll shows them with 52% of support for re-election. My best guess would be an oversampling of the City of Detroit is to blame for some of these anomalies, where Green Party candidates often fare about as well in elections as the Republicans (both in low single-digits).
However, I can say one thing for sure (and I'm not saying this in the same way the Hollywood lunatics said it in 2000 or 2004): If Granholm is re-elected (which I'm slowly coming to the realization that could actually happen), I am going to be leaving the State of Michigan for sure upon graduating college. Why? Other than my family, there's nothing left for me here. No opportunity, no jobs, no nothing; only clever excuses as to why not.
I implore you, therefore... pray for the voters of Michigan, that they may actually get with the (painfully-obvious) program and see what is going on, rather than accept the status quo.
"I could explain, but that would be very long, very convoluted, and make you look very stupid. Nobody wants that... except maybe me."
is simply a statement of fact. The fact being that you recognize the economic realities of life in Michigan.
The Alec Baldwins of the world were issuing threats. They thought we might care if they moved overseas.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
Real Clear Politics has turned hard left. I wouldn't trust anything they put out there. They are extremely biased against libertarians. They won't even list Bob Smither on their site, even though he's ahead of Republican Sekula-Gibbs by 10 points. Is that insane or what???
Don't trust RCP. There may have been a time when they were a little more balanced. These days they are just a pawn for DailyKos and other Libertarian/Republican haters.
Eric Dondero
www.mainstreamlibertarian.com
Putting to the side that a lot of us know and respect a lot of the folks over at RCP, this bit of libel:
These days they are just a pawn for DailyKos and other Libertarian/Republican haters.
...is uncalled for. And is your last iteration of it.
Please desist now. This obsession is cluttering the board. You're otherwise a decent commenter. Please move on.
That's more than a request.
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
Listen buddy, I have spent the last 8 months traveling all over the country busting my ass for libertarian/conservative causes, namely Property Rights/Against Eminent Domain and Stop the Over Spending initiatives in Colorado, Montana, Oregon and Missouri. You'd be hardpressed to find a more dedicated Right-wing political activist in this Nation.
How dare you ask me to "move on."
I'm one of the only libertarians out there begging and pleading with Libertarian Party members to back Republican candidates this year, and you want to diss me, and tell me to leave, as well?
Am I to take that to mean that you don't want Libertarian votes for the GOP?
Conrad Burns is behind John Tester by 3 points. The Libertarian Party candidate is polling 3 to 5 points dependeing on the poll.
Do you really want to risk alienating Libertarian voters and driving them away from the Republican Party?
Eric Dondero
www.mainstreamlibertarian.com
Notice in the newly released Montana results, there's zero mention on Real Clear Politics of the Libertarian candidate Stan Jones. In a poll last week he was at 5%. Could his support have evaporated to 0% that soon? I doubt it.
I'm supporting Burns, as a libertarian Republican who has spent the last 6 months in Montana. And I'm urging all Libertarians in the State to do the same. But how can we guage this race, if RCP won't even report Libertarian support for Jones?
RCP is just once again, proving their extreme leftist biased against libertarians. Don't trust them for nothing.
Eric Dondero
www.mainstreamlibertarian.com
We worked it out the first time, thanks. We're also not particularly interested in the fact that RCP apparently stole your girlfriend in high school, ran over your dog or took the last of the strawberries that you were so looking forward to...
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
But isn't it interesting, how RCP continues to prove their left-wing bias each and every day. Wake up in the morning, and "Vallah" there's a new left-wing shot over the bow by DailyKos front group RCP.
Hey, here's a question for ya. What's the big headline today? The Indiana race, right? Dickerson pulls ahead by 3 points. This is HUGE NEWS!!! Red State got it right.
Do you see any mention anywheres on RCP of this race? You'd think it'd be their headline story. Nah, can't have anything that even smells of a Republican win (save George Allen who is way out ahead and would be hard to deny), anywhere at RCP.
Eric Dondero
www.mainstreamlibertarian.com
Thomas and Moe have politely asked you to tie your bloggyhorse up at the hitching post OUTSIDE the bar and to stop bringing said bloggyhorse inside and letting it annoy the other peaceable patrons.
What is so freakin hard about understanding that simple request?
Let me make this easy for you. You've been here a long time, we appreciate that. You've just been warned by two moderators to stop a certain behavior that is really adding nothing to the discussion. You should appreciate that. But you have to try to get the last word in. We don't appreciate that.
Let me spell this out.
Knock off your anti-RCP vendetta right now. If you can't do that, then stop posting until after election day. If you won't knock it off and insist on posting on the subject you are a goner.
Come out and say it. Have the courage of your convictions.
Do you wish to silence libertarians who support the GOP?
Remember, we are the only link to the Libertarian Party. We are the ones on the front lines getting hammered daily by LP diehards because of our support for Republicans, whom they mostly despise. We are the ones who are begging and pleading with these Libertarian Party stalwarts to back GOP candidates in tight races.
Occasionally we are successful. Paul Coverdale won in 1994 for US Senate, because of our intervention. John Thune won Libertarian support in the last 3 days of his election, largely due to our efforts.
You want to just kiss that all away? Purge the libertarians. That really makes a great deal of sense in these waning days of the election; instead of expanding the Big Tent and inviting more libertarians in, tell them to get lost, and tell them "we don't need your votes."
Be real careful with how you respond to this post.
Eric Dondero
www.mainstreamlibertarian.com
I thought libertarians were champions of property rights, and here you are acting like it's some horrible thing for the site leadership to set standards for behavior on this private site.
--
If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
Having found myself on the wrong side of the moderators on a couple of occasions, I have some practiced advice for you.
Stop. Take a deep breath. Find something new to comment on.
Thomas, Moe, etal are not unreasonable guys and you're a generally good commenter. Don't jump off the building to make a point that pretty much nobody but you cares about.
If you really feel the need to air this topic, write a blog entry.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
The comments of these two gentleman have absolutely infuriated me. I am more than any other single individual in the US the most diehard advocate of Libertarians backing GOP candidates nationwide. Ask anyone in the libertarian movement. Everyone knows me. I have been savaged on libertarian blogs for my support for Republicans, and most particularly for my organizing "Libertarians for Bush" in 2004.
And to turn around and have the very people on my team, whom I'm attempting to help diss me and denigrate my efforts, I find to be extremely offensive.
An apology from these two gentleman is quite the order.
Eric Dondero
www.mainstreamlibertarian.com
At least the one from Mason-Dixon released today. It sampled 38% from northeast Ohio, and this area is the Democrat stronghold for the state.
Unless something drastically changes in VA, TN & NJ we keep control of the Senate! On NJ, I believe voters due to scandals or the prospect of further scandals will view Menendez as a pariah and vote for Kean. Maybe a little optimistic but highly probable!
"The Road To Freedom Is Seldom Traveled By The Multitude" Madhouse Thought
After the Fox ad, I'm spittin' mad, and really hope Talent can win--and win decisively over a candidate I am growing to STRONGLY dislike. Some profane words come to mind.
Quick question--does anyone know the state of the Mo. turn-out preparations? In 2002, Talent averaged 2-3 points ahead in the pre-election polls but barely pulled it out.
But in '04, the final RFP average had Bush up +4, but he won with about +7.
SO, I'm hoping that the effect of the GOP turn-out efforts will look more like '04 than '02.
Please send me some good news.
Let me say that, while I'm not involved with the campaign, I have no reasons to doubt that the only title change that Claire McCaskill will see in January is changing her title from State Auditor to Former State Auditor.
The GOTV effort is very strong, with over 1 million out of a 5 or 6 million population contacted already, and with many people ready to pull out all the stops in the final days to make sure people know to get to the polls.
All in all, it will be close, but we should be returning Jim Talent to Washington on November 8.
Don't be afraid to see what you see.-Ronald Reagan
For more common sense conservatism, visit the Show Me Conservatism blog.
significantly under count Republican voters.
They are designed to suppress Republicans. This has been the sop for dems and lefties for years.
We need to focus on two things:
Slapping down dem attack ads like the MJ Fox bs that he is spewing, and GOTV.
In a just released Rasmussen poll (still behind the paywall), Republican Bob Corker leads Harold Ford 49%-47%. This is the first time Corker's been ahead in Rasmussed in quite some time. Their last poll put Ford up by 2, while the one before that had him up by 5.
Support Bob Corker.
That Lieberman could be convinced to caucus with the Republicans after being abandoned by his party?
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
Outside of national security he's pretty solidly liberal.
...and it's damning that the Democrats have put themselves into a position where the above sentence is accurate. Anyway, Lieberman is going to have way too much fun deciding which sacrificial victim will be offered up to appease his wrath towards his fellow party-members to listen to our blandishments. Aim at a Senator, kids, and you had better not miss.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
which means one less Democrat arm to twist to vote for cloture on judicial nominees.
Other than that, and national security, he's a liberal Democrat, and will probably not change parties. But he's a lot better than Lamont would be.
The bad news: Conservatism is hard to sell. The good news is that it works.
[Because when you get banned here for lying about who you are and why you're here, you don't get second chances. Bye now. - Moe Lane]
You asked for it - Here's my very out Democrat username and out Democratic post.
The anti-George Allen post from a non-Allen supporter.
Will I be banned?
But posting off topic isn't very nice of you.
Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints - Sympathy for the Democrats
I chose a "polls" post with Allen's poll numbers mentioned. Despite my difference in politics, rudeness was never my goal.
you feel it necessary to get in Moe's face on your first post? You've been here all of four minutes and you can't contain yourself? If you have a point, try to make it in a rational way. Otherwise, go away.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
I was merely responding to a comment from Moe himself (who was very polite*) attached to a post elsewhere on the site.
[*Actually, I was proudly rude to the Moby. - Moe Lane]
click on the "Reply To This" link on the post. Otherwise, your post goes to the end of the article and is disconnected from what ever point you are trying to make.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
got anything newer than a month old? Or even something that might be relevant to ANYTHING????
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
Interesting. Given that the racism allegations stretch back 34 years, a month old isn't very latent.
since Webb hasn't been able to traction with this crap, I'm guessing it's not relevant to the people of Virginia.
Do you think the Robert Byrd's membership in the KKK and his racist comments are relevant to anything? After all, his racism seemingly runs a lot deeper than anything Allen has been accused of, and he's never bothered to deny any of it.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
As a shoe-leather volunteer in the No. VA area, it comes up unsolicited quite often.
Just sayin'.
And honestly, I don't live in WV and don't have other than the vaguest of information about Byrd to provide an informed response.
that we've been over (and over and over) this. Maybe someone else can point you to some blogs/stories we've had here. For 99.9% of us this is old news (and resolved news).
Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints - Sympathy for the Democrats
like "unsubstantiated?" And you do know what "latent" means, right?
While we're at this, stop trolling.
I tossed him (as GetItDone) off for trying to double-team last month's Allen Outrage Du Jour, and he came back. Now he's gone again.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
Drudge is reporting that Talent will have a resonse ad up including a cardinals player and Jesus (or at least the actor who played him) by tomorrow night.
DeWine wins easily >4%. Browns sinking and running out of money.
when he leads by 8 points?
For whatever reason, neither Santorum or DeWine were ever able to make their races competitive.
At the end of the day, the outcome depends on who shows up to vote. Money if very important as the "mother's milk" of funding communication, but flesh and blood pulls the levers (except in Chicago where the dead can vote twice).
It seems like we are in for alot of noise as GOTV versus MSTM.
A lot of polls out there are nothing more than liberal MSM 'pollaganda' intended to depress the GOP... maybe the leftwing cut-n-run voted-against-patriot-act loves-amnesty pro-tax-hiking Democrats Sherrod Brown really is beating DeWine in the current polling, but I've seen my share of polls (this especially happened in 2002) where the vote ended up being about 5% more favorable on election day than the polls were 2 weeks out...
So while DeWine and Santorum are the underdogs, I wouldnt count them out until the ballots themselves are counted.
An 8% gap looks bad but reality is that Sherrod Brown is a leftwing extremist who deserves to lose that race. Most voters only dimly know this 2 weeks out, and get their information from the 'media noise'. As they focus and pay attention, the GOP perks up ... IF THEY RUN A GOOD ISSUES ORIENTED CAMPAIGN THAT SHARPENS THE DIFFERENCES AND MAKES THE CHOICE CLEAR.
Santorum is running a good campaign, with some good ads ... See:
http://www.ricksantorum.com/uvc/
I wake up this morning and Real Clear Politics has a link to the Bob Smither, Libertarian for Congress Campaign at TX CD-22. It seems they have come around after my repeated requests. Not saying anyone here had anything to do with it, but if you did, thank you.
And my sincerest apologies for accusing RCP of hating libertarians. I'll be more careful in the future.
Eric Dondero
www.mainstreamlibertarian.com
To watch Kos's head explode if Burns, Allen and Lieberman all win.