Unlikely Voter

SurveyUSA polled the North Carolina Senate race for WRAL, and the result is striking. In fact, it’s entirely unlike any other poll I’ve seen of the race between Republican Richard Burr and Democrat Elaine Marshall.

This poll makes Burr’s last big polling jump look small and timid.

Real Clear Politics showed 21 polls yesterday, plus we’re already at 5 today, so I’m grateful that some of them can be done in batches as with this bunch on the Nevada Senate race from Ipsos for Reuters, Rasmussen Reports, and POR for Fox News.

If we color Republican advantages in red, leads for Democrats in blue, and ties in green, then this set is a rainbow of results. Not a full rainbow or a double rainbow though, sorry.

I’m beginning to think that it may be time to scale back my near-obsessive coverage of the Ohio Senate race. It’s been a rollercoaster, but Democrat Lee Fisher has not shown a lead over Republican Rob Portman since June.

The three new polls out, from Rasmussen Reports, SurveyUSA, and Fox News/POR don’t change that, either.

Colorado is one of those states where the Republican Party had done pretty poorly lately. It looked like this year was the year of mending though, but it’s hard to see that in the Governor’s race. Democrat John Hickenlooper leads Republican Dan Maes easily in the new Rasmussen, but that’s because of a third party protest run going on this year.

The last time Public Policy Polling hit the Kentucky Senate race, Republican Randal Paul had squandered a huge lead. Democrat Jack Conway had pulled within 7 in the Rasmussen poll back at the end of June, and he was even tied in the PPP poll of Registered Voters.

PPP (this time for Daily Kos) is polling Likely Voters now, and it’s not good news for Conway.

With Christine O’Donnell’s victory tonight in the Republican Senate Primary, my last Senate projection’s hedge of a 50% Republican victory chance is obsolete. O’Donnell is the winner, and now I’m looking at how that number would look with the straight up matchup of her against Democrat Chris Coons.

Quinnipiac has released this month’s poll for the Connecticut Senate race. Now we turn to those who say Rasmussen’s “House Effect” is repsonsible for Democrat Richard Blumenthal’s surprisingly weak leads against Republican Linda McMahon, because Quinnipiac has the race even closer than Rasmussen does.

With the House update done, it’s time to move on to the new Senate update. Last week the pace of Republican gains slowed, as the GOP gained less than a full seat in my projection since I started running it. But the chance of a Republican majority has climbed every time, so let’s see if that still holds.

Another week, another look at where the generic ballot polls are taking us! Last week’s House update had the Republicans gaining 60 seats in the House of Representatives, truly a historic gain wiping out the last two elections’ worth of gains for the Democrats.

But with all the new polls out since, let’s see where we are now.

If this isn’t the most exciting and competitive year for Republican primaries of all time, it has to be close. Ovide Lamontagne had faded far behind Kelly Ayotte in the New Hampshire Senate primary, but he’s been making a comeback. And now Public Policy Polling has him truly competitive.

And to think he looked like spoiler bait once upon a time!

I said twice before that Christine O’Donnell’s big challenge in the Delaware Republican primary for Senate was that she needed to give the voters a reason to vote for her over the popular Mike Castle. For the whole primary season, she’d failed at that.

Judging by the new PPP poll, she’s very recently had great success. She leads.

I’d written off Democrat Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in her run for re-election in the South Dakota At-Large House seat. Poll after poll has been very friendly to Republican Kristi Noem.

But if this new Rasmussen isn’t an outlier, then I was as wrong as you can be.

Much as Richard Burr has underperformed in the view of many, so too is Democrat Richard Blumenthal having more trouble than expected to shake Republican Linda McMahon in the Connecticut Senate race.

And while it is Rasmussen’s second consecutive single-digit gap that inspires this post, Quinnipiac also has it at 10, a long way from the D+41 of January.