Unlikely Voter

At-Large House races may get a disproportionate amount of attention and polling, but it is what it is. So Stephanie Herseth Sandlin’s polling troubles get the whole country’s attention, while a House incumbent in some other state might barely draw notice.

And the South Dakota At-Large Representative is having serious problems. I just don’t see how she can win this.

Carly Fiorina’s support continues in a band of 38-43 in the new Rasmussen poll of the California Senate race, while Barbara Boxer fails to reach 50.

Boxer strikes me as the Democrats’ counterpart to Richard Burr: She really ought to be doing better, but she’s letting her opponent hang around.

The last we looked in at Florida, the primaries seemed to be settling down. The two key races with remaining primaries, two Republicans running for Governor and two Democrats running for Senate, seemed to be showing clear frontrunners.

Well now a pair of polls have come out checking the general election matchups, but in those I’m seeing no clarity, but just a lot of noise and some confusing, close, three-way races.

There’s something to be said for consistency. And no matter who hires Greenberg Quinlan Rosner to gauge the House outlook for Democrats, bad news seems to come back.

That consistency continues with GQR’s poll of “voters,” both likely and not, for Citizen Opinion, H/T to Liberty Central.

While the Pennsylvania Senate race has lived up to my expectations of volatility (Rasmussen has swing from Pat Toomey +8 to Joe Sestak +4 back to Toomey +6 most recently), the race for Governor has been pretty boring.

No matter how many times this race gets polled, Republican Tom Corbett defies the recent partisan trend of Pennsylvania and consistently leads Democrat Dan Onorato, most recently by 11.

SurveyUSA polled Colorado for KUSA and the Denver Post. There is in fact more going on than the chaos of the Republican primary for Governor.

The Democrats also have primaries going on, and SUSA shows movement there, too.

After an exciting and unpredictable (thought not often in a good way) primary season, it seems that Nikki Haley has reason to relax some.

Not that she can quit campaigning, but a large lead over Vincent Sheheen makes it clear that the earlier nastiness has long been put to bed in South Carolina.

I’ve been staring slack-jawed so long at Russ Feingold’s surprising difficulties in Wisconsin, that I completely neglected to see that there’s a close race for Governor going on in that state, too.

Wisconsin has long been the state most friendly to progressives in America. Could Republicans win the top two statewide races there, without the benefit of an anomaly like the Paul Wellstone funeral?

Florida is a large and aggressively contested state. It, of all states, demands the clarity of traditional horserace polling. We have been denied that opportunity yet, though, because the Republicans still need a candidate for Governor and the Democrats still need a candidate for Senate.

Quinnpiac’s poll suggests we may get answers soon, as late entering political novices Rick Scott and Jeff Greene take leads, showing clear daylight between the candidates in each primary.

When Ron Johnson showed a lead over Russ Feingold in the Wisconsin Senate polling, it could have been a fluky outlier result. The incumbent Democrat could still have been safe.

Rasmussen again has Johnson ahead, though, so that theory is ruled out. The lead is tiny, but looks real.

I’ve seen a few Republicans express serious doubts about Carly Fiorina after the latest California Senate poll from Public Policy Polling, but I think close inspection of that poll should give one pause before putting too much weight on its results.

Besides, the other new poll, from the Public Policy Institute of California, deep down is as bad for Barbara Boxer as the Republicans could ever hope for.

Up and down, up and down, that’s the story of Richard Burr’s fight against challenger Elaine Marshall. I’m sure he’s much happier to lead than to trail but when he keeps hanging in the mid-40s, and Marshall keeps hanging around in the upper 30s, he’s in a position where he could be knocked off.

Civitas has a new poll out and the story still hasn’t changed.

The big, scary to Republicans headline over at Hotline is Ayotte’s Unfavorable Ratings Rising in UNH Poll.

I’m sure it’s true, but that’s what happens in contested primaries such as the one right now for Republicans in the New Hampshire Senate race. Right now, Bill Binnie’s fans don’t like Kelly Ayotte much, her fans don’t like him much.