Kaboom, part one: O’Donnell over Castle

I said twice before that Christine O’Donnell’s big challenge in the Delaware Republican primary for Senate was that she needed to give the voters a reason to vote for her over the popular Mike Castle. For the whole primary season, she’d failed at that.

Judging by the new PPP poll, she’s very recently had great success. She leads.

First off, PPP now has Castle underwater in favorability at a 43/47/10 split, bringing him down to near parity with O’Donnell’s 45/[41]/14 split. I said she had to find a way to overcome his personal popularity, and she seems to have succeeded by eroding his popularity among Republican primary likely voters.

So that brings us to the top line itself: O’Donnell 47, Castle 44 (MoE 3.8). That makes this a 65/35 race, by my analysis of this poll, with O’Donnell on top.

Key stat: conservatives are backing O’Donnell 62-31, and moderates are backing Castle 69-21. O’Donnell has made this a battle of party factions, and not one of Castle’s personal popularity vs the world. That’s made the race competitive.