Unlikely Voter

My plan had been to push out projections every Monday until election day but Labor Day brought out the laziness in me, so we do this week’s on Tuesday. Last time, my third projection showed the second straight gradual gain for Republicans. Let’s see if the trend continues.

As I hinted yesterday, it is now time to update my House projection. My last comprehensive review gave Republicans 52 seats over 2008, but let’s see how far the Swingometer needles move this time, as even I have been surprised by how far some of these new Generic Ballots have shifted toward Republicans.

I didn’t know if Real Clear Politics would give me any new polls to discuss on Labor Day, but we actually have two interesting ones today: two new generic ballots to feed into the Swingometer, holding us over to my next big Generic Ballot roundup.

SurveyUSA is no fly-by-night operation in polling. They’ve been around a while, they have a reputation, and a great many newspapers seem use them to poll local House races.

So we can’t dismiss their continuing series of polls which look very good for Republicans, including this new Kentucky Senate poll for the Louisville Courier-Journal with Republican Randal Paul seeming to overwhelm Democrat Jack Conway.

New Hampshire apparently tries to hard in Presidential years to have its primaries first, that it tires and has to have its Senate primaries last. So we’re still on primary watch for that state, and it looks like the Republican race has shifted again.

Kelly Ayotte still leads the primary race to decide Democrat Paul Hodes’s opponent, but it appears the race for second is wide open now.

We’re seeing a real discrepancy in the California Senate polling. SurveyUSA’s last two results were Republican Carly Fiorina ahead 5 and and now 2, while Rasmussen Reports has had Democrat Barbara Boxer up 5.

When the first major post-primary poll came out for the Washington Senate race, some questioned whether it was skewed toward Republican Dino Rossi over Democrat Patty Murray, or if it was simply an outlier.

But now we have confirmation that Rossi does appear to have a lead at this point, though perhaps not as large as SurveyUSA showed.

For a long while I thought the Ohio Senate seat the one Republican held seat most likely to turn over to the Democrats, but that time is long gone. The numbers have shifted in Ohio. Democrat Lee Fisher hasn’t led Republican Rob Portman in a poll since June. Add in that incumbent Governor Ted Strickland is fading in his re-election bid against Republican John Kasich, and the environment created just might be too negative for Fisher to come back.

Yesterday we got a pair of polls on the Pennsylvania Senate race, both showing Republican Pat Toomey maintaining what is now a steady lead over Democrat Joe Sestak.

Ipsos for Reuters and Rasmussen show different particulars, but neither overall result is good for Pennsylvania Democrats.

All the talk in your typical Senate analysis this year has assumed Republican Mike Castle will beat Democrat Chris Coons in the Delaware Senate race, but the fact is there’s still a GOP primary in progress.

It’s forgivable to forget about that primary when polling of the primary is scarce, and PPP and Rasmussen hold Coons under 40, but let’s extrapolate from the PPP poll to the primary.