Unlikely Voter

Yes, yes, I can hear the groans from here already, but when I see two polls one day apart from each other that give diametrically opposite results in the Florida Governor’s race, I get worried.

Republican Rick Scott had similarly erratic polling in his primary race which finished close with 3% final difference, so as his polling against Democrat Alex Sink is swingy, I worry about the need for another divisive recount.

I said it over and over again when Democrat Harry Reid went on a polling run, and I will say it now when Republican Sharron Angle has gone on a run: trading tiny leads back and forth is the sign of a tied race with random statistical noise around it, not any genuine changes in public opinion or “Big Mo.”

So yes, despite the new Rasmussen poll, in my mind this race is tied.

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.

It’s October. The baseball games start to count for more, and in the National League where men are men, and players play on the field, the games become riveting managerial duels. Yes, I know I just lost readers. My Dodgers are home now and I can say what I want.

The polling is also getting more exciting though, as even the Gallup Poll is moving to a Likely Voter model. Let’s see where we are versus last week’s 49 seat Republican gain.

In private conversation I keep referring to the state of the New Hampshire Congressional polling as a possible Republican sweep, as Charlie Bass, Frank Guinta, and Kelly Ayotte are all in good shape to win in November.

However a sweep in New Hampshire technically should require a win in the Governor’s race, but the polling has favored Democrat John Lynch over Republican John Stephen, including this new WMUR/UNH poll.

Back when Democrat Patty Murray got several good polls all at once, taking nearly double digit leads over Republican Dino Rossi in the Washington Senate race, I didn’t think it was a fundamental shift of public opinion. I called it a “good week,” and when her leads dropped, I said the race was returning to a tie.

The new Rasmussen suggests I was right and in fact the Washington Senate race may take on the form of the Nevada one: very close.

Wisconsin is traditionally the most Progressive state in America. Progressives win there. Progressives have long won there. Progressives have won there even in years when they lost in much of America. Wisconsin even went in for the La Follette-founded Progressive Party, making it a highly successful third party within the state for about a decade.

So I’m just at a loss for words as to how a conservative Republican can lead a progressive Democrat by double figures in the new Rasmussen poll.

Some states get seven or eight polls of their Senate races. West Virginia has had two: Public Policy Polling and Rasmussen Reports. And honestly it seems that we were lucky to get PPP to jump in there.

But now that Rasmussen’s latest is out, it’s official: Republican John Raese leads all the current polling over Democrat Joe Manchin.

It’s technically Tuesday morning early as I write this, but I’m going to use the polls released on Monday, so this will be filed as this Monday’s projection update, as always built with generic ballot polls from Real Clear Politics.

Last week the Republicans fell off from historic gains to a result with a small majority. Let’s see if the trend continues on down or not.

I am at a loss as to how to analyze the polling of the race for Governor in Florida. Of the last four polls at Real Clear Politics, Republican Rick Scott leads according to Rasmussen Reports and Ipsos for Reuters, while Democrat Alex Sink leads acccording to Mason Dixon and CNN/Time.

Two polls concluded on the same day (Rasmussen and Mason Dixon) are not supposed to have a thirteen point swing between them, predicting different winners, but they do. So what’s going on?

Being just one man trying to cover 435 House races, 37 Senate races, a few dozen more states electing Governors, plus some of the technical and mathematical aspects of polling, I tend not to post on races that aren’t competitive.

So it’s surprising to me that I now have not one, but two New York polls to discuss today: Quinnipiac on the Governor’s race and Rasmussen on the Senate special election.

Rasmussen Reports polled the hypothetical three way matchup for Alaska Senate between Republican Joe Miller, Democrat Scott McAdams, and newly minted independent Lisa Murkowski.

This is clearly the best case scenario for Murkowski as she actually won’t be on the ballot, but even in this case, the result is not changed from the previous poll.