Poll Analysis and Election Projection
Hey look, a post!
While I’m sure everyone involved is so proud of Vanderbilt’s data filtering app for its recent poll of Tennessee showing Barack Obama still losing in one of the two states he ran behind John Kerry in, but the problem is that the details are made less transparent.
What a shame.
Being just one man trying to cover 435 House races, 37 Senate races, a few dozen more states electing Governors, plus some of the technical and mathematical aspects of polling, I tend not to post on races that aren’t competitive.
So it’s surprising to me that I now have not one, but two New York polls to discuss today: Quinnipiac on the Governor’s race and Rasmussen on the Senate special election.
Along with West Virginia, Wisconsin I wanted to see more polling in. Rasmussen Reports has been the lone voice up there polling again and again, showing these key races competitive while the rest of the polling world passed on by.
PPP went there for Daily Kos finally, and now we get that critical second opinion on the races to see if they are as competitive as Rasmussen said.
I was going nuts watching West Virginia get almost no polling, even as Rasmussen Reports repeatedly showed the race close. Well I need not pull my hair out any longer, as Public Policy Polling hit the race.
And once again, the theory of a Rasmussen “House Effect” for Republicans is called into question.
So it’s looking like PPP is the only pollster so bullish for Democrats in California, because we’re back to polling that has the race close with the new result from Fox News.
Rasmussen Reports polled the hypothetical three way matchup for Alaska Senate between Republican Joe Miller, Democrat Scott McAdams, and newly minted independent Lisa Murkowski.
This is clearly the best case scenario for Murkowski as she actually won’t be on the ballot, but even in this case, the result is not changed from the previous poll.
With the House update done, it’s time to move on to the new Senate update. Last week the pace of Republican gains were halted entirely as the party gave back the half seat it gained the week before. The chance of a Republican majority also dropped back to 4%. With the events of the last week I expect that to go down even further, but let’s see how much it sends up to be.
It’s Monday, so it’s time to head over to Real Clear Politics and round up the most recent Generic Ballot polls to come up with a new projection of the House.
Last week’s said Republicans +58. Let’s see where we are now.
Democrat Barbara Boxer just had her best poll in nearly two months, as PPP’s newest is showing her eight points ahead of Republican Carly Fiorina in the California Senate race.
August and early September brought several polls with Fiorina ahead, so this new result is a striking change from that period.
Daily Kos and Public Policy Polling have hinted on Twitter that they have a new Wisconsin poll coming, which I am glad of because I’ve long wanted to see a second opinion in that state, but I’d like to start the week by hitting a pair of polls I missed while I was in Austin over the weekend: Rasmussen Reports on the Wisconsin Senate race and then and then on the race for Governor.
TEA Party-driven politics get the bulk of the attention this year, but Democrats have targets of their own and Michele Bachmann, challenged by DFL candidate Tarryl Clark, is one of those targets.
However so far she is doing fine if SurveyUSA’s latest is to be believed.
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