Unlikely Voter

I always hesitate to analyze the California Senate polling because I have strong feelings about it. I live here. I was engaged in the primary. But this is key to determining how big of a wave, if any, Republicans see in the Senate, so I must try.

I’ve given enough time for both parties to settle down after the primaries, so here’s Rasmussen’s latest. Boxer leads Fiorina, but this is close.

The Elway Poll has updated us on the Washington Senate race. And while the Republicans have yet to decide who will be the standard bearer against Patty Murray, Dino Rossi is getting all the attention.

That said, Elway shows Murray below 50 against all leading Republicans, who each gained 6-8 points against her.

I know many of my readers are interested in the race for Governor in Texas, so let’s check in on Rasmussen’s latest on that race.

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner did a poll for Democracy Corps, one that appears to be a followup on the joint GQR/Public Opinion Strategies poll done for NPR.

Does it have better news for Democrats?

Elections in Nevada give the voter the choice to vote for “None of These” candidates listed. Every poll I see of the Illinois Senate race suggests to me that if Illinois put that option on the ballot, None of These would win.

The next bit of evidence for the pile: PPP’s latest poll of the race.

SurveyUSA polled North Carolina’s second House district for the Civitas Institute.

Presumably the idea here is to check on how Bob Etheridge, incumbent Democrat, is doing after an ambush video went a bit poorly for him.

SurveyUSA polled the Oregon race for Governor and interesting enough, has it as a three way race. Featured are Republican Chris Dudley (6’11” center out of Yale), Democrat John Kitzhaber, and Progressive Jerry Wilson.

By the name of the third party I think we all know what’s going to happen.

The last time we looked in on Maryland, former governor and Republican Bob Ehrlich had taken his 7 point loss to incumbent Democrat Martin O’Malley, and narrowed the deficit to 6 and then to 3 in the polls.

Now it’s all tied up.

South Dakota has only one House seat, so its House elections are full-fledged statewide affairs, and so we get a rare House poll to look at, from Rasmussen Reports.

NPR had a poll done of what they call the 60 most competitive House seats held by Democrathttp://unlikelyvoter.com/wp-admin/options-media.phps, as well as the 10 most competitive held by Republicans. However the poll wasn’t done seat by seat, but rather in three groups: The top 30 of the Democrats, the bottom 30 of the Democrats, and the 10 Republicans.

Let’s see just how far each group is swinging compared with 2008, and try to guess what that means for the country.

The latest Washington Poll from the University of Washington is out, and now that the dust has settled around Dino Rossi’s entering the race, he’s still close to incumbent Patty Murray.

In fact, her lead has been cut in half from last time.

Maine still has does not have a runoff primary ahead but so Rasmussen took a look at the general election matchup anyway.

In general I’m giving the recently passed races a little more time, and probably next week you’ll see me again talking about California, Nevada, and other states from last week. But not having covered Maine yet, here’s a first look for us.

I’m not the only one who’s been skeptical of Nate Silver’s dogged attacks on Rasmussen Reports, demanding that they open up their secret sauce just because the firm’s results are less favorable to his preferred political party than other pollsters’ results are.

Mark Blumenthal is on the case, esposing what is fundamentally a hypocritical position by Silver and his site, fivethirtyeight.com.