Unlikely Voter

Many pollsters rely on random telephone calls in order to get their interviews done. It’s cheaper and easier than having to get people to sit down and do face-to-face interviews, because over the phone a broader range of people can be accessed. The result is a better sample than can be gotten from, say, a shopping mall.

But that ease may be on the way out if people stop owning landlines.

Public Policy Polling updates us on North Carolina and, well, it’s not looking any better for Republican Richard Burr than it did before in PPP’s survey.

In fact, it’s worse, wave year or no.

We’re less than a week away from primary election day in Pennsylvania, so let’s take a look at the latest polling news from the House Special election to replace Jack Murtha, the Senate primary for Arlen Specter’s seat, and a surprisingly interesting House race.

Some researchers led by Noah Smith at Carnegie Mellon tried an experiment: Could they predict the results of traditional polling, which has as its core feature a genuine random sample of people, with careful monitoring of Twitter?

Thanks to Arlen Specter’s collapse, it’s now more than academic to see how Joe Sestak matches up against Pat Toomey in the Pennsylvania Senate rate. So, on to Rasmussen’s poll from the 6th.

Every single time we’ve been looking at the polls for the Pennsylvania Primary election, Arlen Specter was way ahead of Joe Sestak. Then he commented that he regretted leaving the Republican Party.

Uh oh.

Building on the work I did on the House races, let’s see what the latest Cook Political Report ratings suggest for the Senate elections in November.

Daily Kos and Research 2000 looked back to Arizona. It’s a reasonably comprehensive poll, carpetbombing the general elections for Governor and Senate, as well as looking at the Republican primary for Senate.

Let’s unpack it.

Dino Rossi is stalling on a decision to enter the Washington Senate race against Patty Murray, but the polls march right on. Two new ones crossed my desk today, one from Rasmussen and another from Elway, and both bring decent to good news for the incumbent.

I’m sorry to report that I’m still sick and it’s destroying my productivity. But I can take a minute and mention this University of New Hampshire poll for WMUR on the New Hampshire Governor’s race.

I’m calling this a partial sick day. The magic of Claritin D is keeping me from being completely miserable, but my mind’s not quite right. So rather than spend too long trying to make a full post, here’s a couple of quick hits from Rasmussen Reports.

It’s late in the day but I know this race is drawing plenty of interest, so here goes.

Daily Kos and Research 2000 hit the PA-12 Special Election. This makes two consecutive polls from sources that lean toward the Democrats. But do Republicans have reason to complain?

The Cook Political Report’s House projections are rather conservative. In 2008 only one flip was not marked competitive, and that was Louisiana’s 2nd CD, in which Joseph Cao upset William Jefferson. I naturally give him a pass on that seat.

What do Cook’s 2010 projections say, and what do we learn from them?