Unlikely Voter

People love general election matchup polling. For some it’s the ultimate way to decide which candidate is the best choice to win a primary. But even if that’s true, it is possible to run such polls too soon.

Right now, it’s too soon to poll the 2016 Presidential race.

Quinnipiac University put out a pair of polls this week I thought were interesting to note. Now, I have and still do think that it’s too soon to test general election Presidential matchups, so don’t think I’m reading a lot into these. But apart from that, I find it odd that Mitt Romney is doing better in Pennsylvania than he is in Ohio.

While everyone focused on Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in Ohio, a major Senate matchup was finalized in the state. Treasurer Josh Mandel was chosen as the Republican challenger to Senator Sherrod Brown.

Brown took advantage of a crippled Ohio GOP and a second midterm wave to knock off a two term incumbent. But can he keep this battleground state seat?

The Republican party has held five primaries this cycle to date: New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Michigan, and Arizona. Mitt Romney won the statewide vote in four of them, including the last three.

Super Tuesday tomorrow will shake all that up, of course. But Ohio looks to be one state Romney may come back to win from Rick Santorum.

Quinnipiac put out a pair of new polls, focusing on the Republican primary race in Pennsylvania and in Ohio. They have some problems that limit their utility, but I believe they will get much attention today because of their top line results, so it’s time to take a look anyway.

Why the attention? Romney bucks the national trend again to lead in both states.

Since Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Senate had a big uproar over unions of government employees, and that uproar has spread to states like Ohio, there’s been a great deal of issue polling on unions and collective bargaining. I tend to ignore all of it, just as I ignore most issue polling. I’ve gotten comments that this is a failure of the site in fact, that I don’t hit these things more.

I have a standard answer for why I tend to ignore issue polling, though: the results are volatile and easily manipulated, either accidentally or intentionally.

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.

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.

For a long while I thought the Ohio Senate seat the one Republican held seat most likely to turn over to the Democrats, but that time is long gone. The numbers have shifted in Ohio. Democrat Lee Fisher hasn’t led Republican Rob Portman in a poll since June. Add in that incumbent Governor Ted Strickland is fading in his re-election bid against Republican John Kasich, and the environment created just might be too negative for Fisher to come back.

According to Rasmussen’s latest, Rob Portman is holding a steady level of support in the Ohio Senate race. However the surge of support that Lee Fisher took after his primary win seems to be receding, which leaves Portman alone on top with a clear lead.

I keep insisting the Ohio Senate race is going to be as drum tight as the Pennsylvania race, but polls like the Ipsos survey for Reuters may force me to re-think that.

Especially when Rob Portman is showing a massive fundraising advantage, a 43-36 lead (MoE 4.3) over Lee Fisher among likely voters is serious news.

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.

Since I tried to tell Rob Portman his business, and suggested he was emphasizing the wrong issues in his campaign, two polls have come out covering the Ohio Senate race. Both by Rasmussen, the late June poll had Portman up 4, and now Rasmussen’s July poll has Portman up 6.

I clearly picked the wrong moment to speak up!