Unlikely Voter

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.

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.

The last time Quinnipiac Uniersity covered the Pennsylvania Senate race, the result was right in the middle of the pack, and inline with every poll from mid-July to early October: a seven point lead for Republican Pat Toomey over Democrat Joe Sestak.

But now, just as PPP came out with its shocking Sestak lead, Q says the race is close.

Republican Pat Toomey has been rather comfortable in the Pennsylvania Senate polling. He hit double digits in the last Rasmussen poll a week ago, and Democrat Joe Sestak hasn’t led a poll since one weird outlier in the middle of May.

For PPP to show Sestak up today is definitely surprising, and noteworthy, but it’s possible this is an outlier.

Yesterday we got a pair of polls on the Pennsylvania Senate race, both showing Republican Pat Toomey maintaining what is now a steady lead over Democrat Joe Sestak.

Ipsos for Reuters and Rasmussen show different particulars, but neither overall result is good for Pennsylvania Democrats.

Franklin & Marshall College is back with a new poll of the Pennsylvania races, file courtesy of Real Clear Politics, but I don’t trust the results.

It’s not just that the result seem to shade a bit more to the Republicans than I’m used to seeing, though. It’s that the numbers overall are just so low that it has me wondering.

Good afternoon. My life gets much easier when polls agree, and that’s the state of the race for the Senate in Pennsylvania. We have two polls out directly comparing Republican Pat Toomey and Democrat Joe Sestak, as well as a poll on the Governor’s race.

All three favor Pat Toomey by a healthy margin.

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.

While the Pennsylvania Senate race has lived up to my expectations of volatility (Rasmussen has swing from Pat Toomey +8 to Joe Sestak +4 back to Toomey +6 most recently), the race for Governor has been pretty boring.

No matter how many times this race gets polled, Republican Tom Corbett defies the recent partisan trend of Pennsylvania and consistently leads Democrat Dan Onorato, most recently by 11.

I don’t use the broad categories that some analysts use but if I did it would take a lot for me to move the Pennsylvania Senate race off of “Toss Up”.

Say what you want about Quinnipiac versus Rasmussen, but the latter’s latest doesn’t convince me.

Just as Ohio and Missouri are the top two Republican Senate seats I would predict could flip, Pennsylvania is a top seat held by Democrats I could easily see fall the other way*.

So when Quinnipiac says Joe Sestak tied Pat Toomey again, I’m not surprised a second.

Back in May, I pondered the voter modeling implications of Pennsylvania Governor’s race, noting just how differently Quinnipiac showed the race from some other pollster.

It’s now July though, and Quinnipiac shows effectively no change from back then.

Rasmussen polled the Pennsylvania Senate race again, and Pat Toomey still leads.

Can Sestak break through and get another surge like his post-primary unity bounce?