Unlikely Voter

We’re less than a week away from primary election day in Pennsylvania, so let’s take a look at the latest polling news from the House Special election to replace Jack Murtha, the Senate primary for Arlen Specter’s seat, and a surprisingly interesting House race.

Daily Kos and Research 2000 looked back to Arizona. It’s a reasonably comprehensive poll, carpetbombing the general elections for Governor and Senate, as well as looking at the Republican primary for Senate.

Let’s unpack it.

It’s late in the day but I know this race is drawing plenty of interest, so here goes.

Daily Kos and Research 2000 hit the PA-12 Special Election. This makes two consecutive polls from sources that lean toward the Democrats. But do Republicans have reason to complain?

I don’t really think any of the newest polls I’m finding are particularly interesting, so I’ll just mention them all quickly and move on to something that hopefully is interesting.

If the Democrats want to regain a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate they have to win seats in their home turf, and that includes the New Hampshire seat of retiring Senator and Republican Judd Gregg.

Rasmussen carpet bombed this race, which fortunately only has three likely matchups.

Here are a few polls that came out from later Friday to today that I don’t think deserve a full work-up, but are worth mentioning at least.

If we look at a series of five polls of the Wisconsin Senate matchup between Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat, and former Governor Tommy Thompson, Republican, we find a broad range of results.

On no news can we really expect the race to move 16 points in one week? Some of these have to be wrong, but will we ever know which?

When I see people, and particularly conservatives, discussing why one poll is better than another, I see the sample pool frequently cited as a reason for favoring one or another. Specifically, some poll watchers insist that any poll not filtered for likely voters, instead of just registered voters or even adults, is not useful in a political context.

The dirty secret is that not all likely voters are created equal. Every pollster has his own secret sauce, and we have to be careful when trusting that kind of filtering. It might not be what we expect.

Today I use a poll of a primary race between two Democrats to illustrate my initial model of a horserace election poll. Until the general election season begins in earnest, the primaries are all we have and I intend to use them as a warmup.