Unlikely Voter

With the House update done, it is as always time to finish the new Senate update. Last week the pace of Republican gains rebounded strong as the party made gains in surprising places. The question this week is: will they hold, or will Democrats pull that projected gain back to six?

It’s October. The baseball games start to count for more, and in the National League where men are men, and players play on the field, the games become riveting managerial duels. Yes, I know I just lost readers. My Dodgers are home now and I can say what I want.

The polling is also getting more exciting though, as even the Gallup Poll is moving to a Likely Voter model. Let’s see where we are versus last week’s 49 seat Republican gain.

In private conversation I keep referring to the state of the New Hampshire Congressional polling as a possible Republican sweep, as Charlie Bass, Frank Guinta, and Kelly Ayotte are all in good shape to win in November.

However a sweep in New Hampshire technically should require a win in the Governor’s race, but the polling has favored Democrat John Lynch over Republican John Stephen, including this new WMUR/UNH poll.

By request (requests always taken via the Contact page, but in general know that individual House race polls are few and far between), I’m taking a fresh look at the Maine Governor’s race.

This is a three way race between Republican Paul LePage, Democrat Libby Mitchell, and Independent (and former Carter and Muskie staffer) Eliot Cutler. The polling has increasingly favored LePage thanks to the split race, but what’s going on with the new Critical Insights poll, is what I think everyone wants to know.

So Newsweek put out a new Generic Ballot. The magazine’s polling had drawn notice before in my House projection reports (this week’s edition coming later today), but this new one just seems completely out of line: Democrats +5 among Registered Voters. That filtering is expected to lean to the left after the 2008 anomaly, but this is ridiculous.

Scientific polling, based on the laws of probability and the compounding of likelihoods, is a mathematical activity. It’s all about the numbers. Without the numbers no poll has meaning. That’s why I highlight key facts like Margins of Error.

Your typical internal poll release is very low on numbers and instead is a one page memo. Those releases can be based on sound polling practices, but they are firstly designed to push an agenda. When I see this new Illinois poll, I am reminded of an internal poll release.

Back when Democrat Patty Murray got several good polls all at once, taking nearly double digit leads over Republican Dino Rossi in the Washington Senate race, I didn’t think it was a fundamental shift of public opinion. I called it a “good week,” and when her leads dropped, I said the race was returning to a tie.

The new Rasmussen suggests I was right and in fact the Washington Senate race may take on the form of the Nevada one: very close.

Wisconsin is traditionally the most Progressive state in America. Progressives win there. Progressives have long won there. Progressives have won there even in years when they lost in much of America. Wisconsin even went in for the La Follette-founded Progressive Party, making it a highly successful third party within the state for about a decade.

So I’m just at a loss for words as to how a conservative Republican can lead a progressive Democrat by double figures in the new Rasmussen poll.

The Illinois Senate race keeps going back and forth. Republican Mark Kirk led a while, then Democrat Alexi Giannoulias took it back, but now having won three consecutive polls including PPP’s latest, it seems that Kirk is definitely on top again.

It’s so close though that the polling of third party candidates is a serious issue. It may not matter in the end, though.

I clearly remember the time when Democrat Richard Blumenthal’s military record became a national story. As surprising to some as the story it self was, it was noteworthy that the polls barely budged at the uproar. Blumenthal maintained massive leads against all the Republican prospects.

My how things have changed in that Connecticut Senate race since Republican Linda McMahon won the nomination.

Democrat Patty Murray had a great week earlier this month. The Elway Poll and the CNN/Time poll both coming in and giving her nine point leads over Republican Dino Rossi changed some feelings about the race.

But SurveyUSA already came in since to show the race closing, and now Fox News/POR coming in similarly, it’s pretty easy to say the race is close to a tie now.

Some states get seven or eight polls of their Senate races. West Virginia has had two: Public Policy Polling and Rasmussen Reports. And honestly it seems that we were lucky to get PPP to jump in there.

But now that Rasmussen’s latest is out, it’s official: Republican John Raese leads all the current polling over Democrat Joe Manchin.

Any political party must work as a team to win. While the primary process will become at times a competitive and even divisive, any inability to set those feelings aside and back the nominee will give the party trouble.

A few Republicans this cycle know what kind of trouble that is, but none has more than Dan Maes against Democrat John Hickenlooper for Colorado Governor. He got opposition from the national party, and he’s collapsed in the polls.