Unlikely Voter

Earlier this week we caught an Iowa poll showing Rick Perry as a new leader in that state’s Republican Presidential race. Yesterday Public Policy Polling came out with a new Iowa poll as well.

Judge for yourself, but I’d say the broad strokes of the We Ask America poll are confirmed, at least when it comes to the big three candidates, though maybe not with Sarah Palin.

This week Gallup polled four Republican candidates against Barack Obama. For the three leading Republicans the results are typical, and do more to show the difference between polls of adults and polls of registered voters (Gallup polled both).

But oddly enough, Ron Paul was different.

By request, we have a somewhat unusual poll: We Ask America asked Iowa Republicans which candidate they don’t want as the Republican Presidential nominee in 2012.

As is usual this time of year, the poll is skewed by the inclusion of non-candidates. This time, overwhelmingly so.

By request I’m taking a look at a new poll of California Republicans by Probolsky Research. It shares problems I’m seeing in many early Presidential polls, but I am surprised at one finding that may be bad news for Mitt Romney.

While the 2012 House Swingometer may have problems due to redistricting making it impossible to do a perfect seat-for-seat swing, I’m going to try using it anyway to see what it says.

We have two generic ballot polls from last month. Let’s see what they might predict for the House in 2012.

I know I’m a week late to this; I had a busy two weeks there and am only now catching up this week. I do believe this poll is worth a mention anyway, though. But the Club for Growth polled Republicans in Indiana, the site of arguably the biggest TEA party primary loss in 2010, on their choice for Senator in 2012.

The conventional wisdom has always been that incumbents under 50 are vulnerable. But what do they say about incumbents under 40?

Sorry I’m behind in my polling commentary. Had a busy two weeks here. Time to start catching up.

The poll itself is unimportant: CNN asked adults about the Space Shuttle program. But the news comes on the front page of the CNN/ORC International poll: “The sample includes 856 interviews among landline respondents and 153 interviews among cell phone respondents.”

CNN is adapting to the new challenges in polling. Will they do well?

Yesterday CBS put out a poll on the debt ceiling. As with most issue polling in the heat of debate, everyone’s eager to hype the poll or to discredit it, depending on results. I even get asked to join in.

I’m skeptical of all issue polling to begin with, I tend to dismiss the polls entirely. But this poll has a serious weighting problem, and I want to call it out as worthless.

Some polls at least deserve some serious scrutiny before they get dismissed as flawed. Others are just so laughable on their faces that I hesitate even to put them in the same posting category as serious works. One of these laughers is This Texas poll from the apparently new firm Azimuth Research Group.

According to Azimuth, Ron Paul runs better for President than Rick Perry statewide among Texas Republicans.

So Fox News put out a new poll of the race for the Republican Presidential nomination. It’s a typical poll in many ways, but Fox’s bit of analysis got me to thinking: Polls like this favor frontrunners and likely skew the race.

I said before that Brad Carson’s own polling looked bad for him to take back his old Congressional seat in Oklahoma.

Looks like I was right: He’s not running after all.

By request, we look at a 2012 House race today. PPP polled Oklahoma’s second district for the Friends of Brad Carson. Carson, a Democrat, of course won this seat previously in 2000 and 2002, giving it up in 2004 in a failed Senate run. Dan Boren, also a Democrat, won the seat in 2004 and has held it ever since. Boren is retiring, so Carson wants to run.

Is he in good shape, like PPP says he is?