Unlikely Voter

Three polls, three races, all close results. We’re starting to see what the 2018 Senate Battleground looks like, as Democrats try to beat the odds and take the Senate.

I’m glad that we’re now starting to have a better idea of the shape of the Senate race, as we settle down on who the candidates are going to be, and how they’re polling against incumbents (or each other, in the case of open seats). Soon I will update my Senate projections with actual data.

In the meantime, we’ve got the first Missouri Senate poll in two months. Sarah Steelman polls an absolute majority over incumbent Claire McCaskill.

When I left for CPAC, Mitt Romney had just won the Nevada caucuses 50-21 over Newt Gingrich, numbers reasonably in line with the last poll, by Public Policy Polling.

In DC I found out Rick Santorum came out of nowhere and did well in Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri. Let’s see if the polls caught it.

Good evening. We have a great deal of new polling that’s flooded in. Much of it is interesting too, so rather than pick and choose which polls I’ll cover in depth and which I will omit, instead I’ll give a quick look at all the good ones.

We’ve got Senate races in Nevada, Connecticut, West Virginia, Ohio, New York, Missouri, and Delaware, plus races for Governor in Illinois, Rhode Island, New York, Hawaii, and Florida. I told you it was a lot.

It’s already bad enough for Democrat Robin Carnahan that she hasn’t led a poll this year, but since primaries Republican Roy Blunt’s lead has been growing. In the likely voter polls he now leads by 6, 7, and now 10 in the latest Rasmussen.

Busy day today, but I couldn’t let go without comment this new poll by Missouri State University for KY3 of the Missouri Senate race.

Even if its findings weren’t entirely out of step with the rest of the polling world, the details of the poll carry a number of warnings that it’s not very accurate.

The new Rasmussen Reports poll of Missouri suggests that with the clarity brought by the primaries, support is coalescing around Roy Blunt, and he appears to be running away from Robin Carnahan in the Senate race.

To think I once considered this seat a toss up, too.

PPP has delivered a poll on the Missouri Senate race for Daily Kos, and I’m seeing genuine anger at the results, which are now filtered for those likely to vote in November.

As Kos says, “So what’s going on? Our old friend, the intensity gap.”

In my estimation, Missouri Republicans have underperformed. The state doesn’t strike me as especially friendly to Democrats, and failed to swing for Obama, but Republicans there ought to do better than they have.

I think Roy Blunt may be opening the kind of lead I expect in that state, after months of concern and close polling.

In an open and credited aping of the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner House battleground polls, Public Opinion Strategies has conducted a massive Senate battleground poll.

Politico has for us the summary and 150 pages of gory, numerical details. I’m going to see what sense I can make of it.

When I heard yesterday that Missouri passed an initiative attacking the PPACA in state, and declaring that Missouri’s citizens are exempt from portions of it, I thought it would be interesting to compare that Proposition C’s results with polling on the issue in state. So let’s check.

Of all the seats Republicans are defending this cycle, the one I think is most likely to flip is Ohio. Number two on that list is Missouri, so when I see results like Rasmussen’s on that race, I’m not surprised a bit.

Before we look at some of today’s primary races, here’s Rasmussen’s from a few days back on the Missouri Senate race.

John McCain barely won the state from Barack Obama, and apparently the Senate race is just as close.