Unlikely Voter

I said earlier today “One poll, one time, from one pollster, when two others disagree, does not make a surge.” Since then, Rasmussen Reports has announced and PPP has teased polls that confirm the Gingrich lead that InsiderAdvantage showed.

And then Rick Perry quit the race, endorsing Newt Gingrich.

InsiderAdvantage polled South Carolina just a few days ago on the 15th, and Mitt Romney had a 32-21 lead on Newt Gingrich.

NewsMax had them poll again on the 18th, and the results were different. Gingrich takes his first SC poll lead in a month.

Political commentators want action and excitement. I’m included in this; I’ve been holding off and holding off on posting on the new polling in case something exciting happened.

It hasn’t. Mitt Romney’s just ahead, folks. And I expect his lead will only grow with Jon Huntsman out.

I made a big deal about the polling in Iowa being skewed. However I have no reason to suspect oddness in the New Hampshire polling going into today. Open primaries are much easier to poll than closed caucuses.

Jon Huntsman has rebounded rapidly, but he’ll likely finish behind Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.

Three quick polls of New Hampshire came out this week to try to measure the effect of Iowa on New Hampshire. Predictably, the top three of Iowa are now the top three in New Hampshire.

This matters most to the one candidate that put nothing into Iowa and everything into New Hampshire: Jon Huntsman.

Rick Santorum. Now? Seriously? This is ridiculous. How are prognosticators supposed to do our jobs if we get a break so late it makes Mike Huckabee look like an early frontrunner? Seriously, Iowa, simmer down now.

All I know is Ron Paul isn’t winning. Beyond that, anything’s possible.

It’s early, so we’ve only had one House generic ballot in the last month that polled likely voters. Some would even say it’s too early to tell who the likely voters are, but as we learned last time, registered voter polls lean too far one way.

But, we peeked in on the early, naive Senate projection, so let’s do the same for the House.

I’ve been going crazy since Thanksgiving. We hadn’t gotten any polls over the long holiday weekend, and then no polling was conducted over the weekend itself, so we went 10 days with no major national polls in the field.

Rasmussen broke the dry spell and the read is simple: Thanksgiving was very, very good to Newt Gingrich.

It always pleases me when two polls taken close together have very similar results. Even if they make out to be wrong some speculation of mine.

So yes, it’s looking like Herman Cain isn’t exactly being helped this week. And if the new Rasmussen poll is genuinely showing a trend from the previous national poll, then he needs this story done as soon as possible. Eyes are wandering.

Before the cold that really took me down since Friday (to explain my silence since), we checked in on the pre-debate polling for Herman Cain’s first debate as a major contender.

It turns out that Cain’s momentum had taken him even further ahead of the Tuesday debate, though post-debate polling suggests he took at hit in the national audience.

While the 2012 House Swingometer may have problems due to redistricting making it impossible to do a perfect seat-for-seat swing, I’m going to try using it anyway to see what it says.

We have two generic ballot polls from last month. Let’s see what they might predict for the House in 2012.

Like everyone else, Rasmussen Reports got two key Senate races wrong, making them big surprises on election night: Colorado and Nevada. Rasmussen also underestimated Barbara Boxer’s lead in California.

My mission since election day has been to find out why everyone got these three states in particular so wrong, while others were accurate. In the process, I’ve taken a good look at Rasmussen’s accuracy this year.

The New York Times’ Nate Silver is now going after Rasmussen Reports again. After the primaries he said Rasmussen was in his crosshairs for ducking out on a number of races by not polling primaries.

According to Silver’s own chart though, Rasmussen polled twice as often as the second place firm, and is still Silver’s primary target. Funny that.