Unlikely Voter

PPP released its poll on the North Carolina Senate race that I’ve been waiting for since the twitter feed hinted the poll was coming.

Richard Burr leads, but it could be the race tilts slightly toward Elaine Marshall in the long run.

Last week I was all over Rob Portman, explaining my theory for why he was having trouble with Lee Fisher in the Ohio Senate race, and trying to tell him how to run his campaign.

I believe his answer would be that he leads this new Rasmussen.

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?

David Vitter appears to be safe. The latest Rasmussen poll of the Louisiana Senate Race has been sitting here for days on my computer, but I just hadn’t gotten around to posting it because it doesn’t appear to be a competitive race.

But let’s get it over with.

We have two new polls to look at on the Ohio Senate race, one from Quinnipiac University and the other from Public Policy Polling.

The results are very similar, so I think it’s pretty safe to say that for the moment, Lee Fisher leads Rob Portman, though by a hair.

Yup, Joe Sestak and Pat Toomey are tied again, says Public Policy Polling.

The only way I saw Toomey keeping his previous lead was if the Job Offer controversy heated up and implicated Sestak in wrongdoing. It seems clear to me that the whole thing has blown over, and now the electorate has shifted back toward the tie I expect it to be from now to November.

Elections in Nevada give the voter the choice to vote for “None of These” candidates listed. Every poll I see of the Illinois Senate race suggests to me that if Illinois put that option on the ballot, None of These would win.

The next bit of evidence for the pile: PPP’s latest poll of the race.

I’ve been saying that the results in North Carolina would be a clear decider between the Rasmussen and PPP likely voter models. New polling has made the difference less dramatic, thanks to a Burr surge, but the difference is still there.

Daily Kos has dropped Research 2000 as the site pollster going forward, citing Nate Silver’s poor marks for the firm’s results. I’m glad of this.

Today we have high profile races in South Carolina, Nevada, California, and Arkansas to look back on and see how well the pollsters’ numbers matched the actual results.

As I’m just one person who lacks the luxury of doing this site full time, I’m not ashamed to work off of Real Clear Politics to make these assessments.

PPP’s latest on the South Carolina Governor’s race doesn’t even cover the Democrats. The assumption must be that Vincent Sheheen has it wrapped up, I suppose.

So, on to the Republican side, where Nikki Haley hopes to win an absolute majority and avoid a runoff.

It’d take me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw, or to try to fathom what’s going on in the Michigan primaries for Governor. But the races for Governor are important, so I figured I’d at least mention PPP’s latest on the races.

Up until now, Kelly Ayotte has been leading the Republican primary for Senate in New Hampshire by enough that I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to her opponents.

But if Magellan Strategies is right in its latest poll, that’s changing.