Unlikely Voter

While I do find it amusing that the final Fox poll and the final PPP poll of Washington favor the opposite of what their respective biases are supposed to suggest (Fox shows Murray +2 and PPP shows Rossi +2), today I am content to wait for returns and find what I can in them.

Because starting tomorrow the offseason work begins.

By request, I’ve decided to take a look at just what kind of electorate the Public Policy Polling screening of Likely Voters seems to be predicting. To do this I will use recent PPP polls from two states: California, which went for Barack Obama heavily, and West Virginia, where Obama’s popularity has never been that hot.

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.

I notice a trend: when people mock reasonable sample sizes (as though multiplying out 500 terms isn’t powerful enough math for anyone), it only seems to be when their preferred candidates are losing, and never the other way.

Since Democrat Joe Manchin, West Virginia Governor and Senate candidate, literally shot a copy of the “Cap and Trade” bill that DC Democrats tend to support, it’s been clear that Republican John Raese’s easy days of running against Barack Obama were going to get harder.

But the new Orion Strategies poll for Marshall University of the race just isn’t credible.

Later today I will find out what my Senate projection says are the four closest Senate races are, but for now, here are what I think those four currently are, and the latest polling on each:

Illinois between Democrat Alexi Giannoulias and Republican Mark Kirk, Nevada between Republican Sharron Angle and Democrat Harry Reid, Washington between Democrat Patty Murray and Republican Dino Rossi, and West Virginia between Republican John Raese and Democrat Joe Manchin.

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.

The long string of single digit gaps we’ve been seeing in the Connecticut Senate polling has been halted, but Republican Linda McMahon is still keeping surprisingly competitive with Democrat Richard Blumenthal.

Three new polls have opened the race up a bit from before. PPP, Fox News/POR, and CT Capitol Report/MRG don’t give McMahon reason to cheer relative to last week, as she fell back some, but the race does not appear to be entirely out of reach for her at this point.

The Illinois Senate race keeps going back and forth. Republican Mark Kirk led a while, then Democrat Alexi Giannoulias took it back, but now having won three consecutive polls including PPP’s latest, it seems that Kirk is definitely on top again.

It’s so close though that the polling of third party candidates is a serious issue. It may not matter in the end, though.

Along with West Virginia, Wisconsin I wanted to see more polling in. Rasmussen Reports has been the lone voice up there polling again and again, showing these key races competitive while the rest of the polling world passed on by.

PPP went there for Daily Kos finally, and now we get that critical second opinion on the races to see if they are as competitive as Rasmussen said.

I was going nuts watching West Virginia get almost no polling, even as Rasmussen Reports repeatedly showed the race close. Well I need not pull my hair out any longer, as Public Policy Polling hit the race.

And once again, the theory of a Rasmussen “House Effect” for Republicans is called into question.

It’s Monday, so it’s time to head over to Real Clear Politics and round up the most recent Generic Ballot polls to come up with a new projection of the House.

Last week’s said Republicans +58. Let’s see where we are now.

Democrat Barbara Boxer just had her best poll in nearly two months, as PPP’s newest is showing her eight points ahead of Republican Carly Fiorina in the California Senate race.

August and early September brought several polls with Fiorina ahead, so this new result is a striking change from that period.