Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Poll: Courtney, Shays Ahead

Constituent Dynamics (click on each district for the full results) has polls out for the 4th and 2nd CD, and has found the following:
2nd Congressional District
Courtney.....51%
Simmons.....45%

4th Congressional District
Shays.....49%
Farrell.....42%

Races summerized here, and methodology here.

A 6% lead in the 2nd is huge, if it stands up. It may also be crucial that Shays has not broken 50%.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not only is it key that Shays didn't break 50%, but if you look at the key category - the likely voter category - his lead is 47%-44%, which is within the 3.1% margin of error.

Anonymous said...

Why no 5th CD in the poll? Is it because the DCCC has not put the big money into the race and still has it 2nd tier.

Anonymous said...

So some polling outfit that none of us have ever heard of conducts a poll in the 4th CD in late August.

Here's a little tip: most people in Fairfield County are on vacation in late August!

Did they call people on Martha's Vineyard?

I'm sure this is representative of the vote in November - not!

By the way, anon. 3:31, Shays is at 49% with 9% undecided. The norm is that 2/3 of the undecideds go to the challenger.

Presto: Shays wins 52-48. Same as last time!

Anonymous said...

The cross tabs look pretty bad for Shays.

First of all, he's only polling at 47-44 among likely voters, well within the margin of error. For a twenty-year incumbent to be only up three points and below the 50% margin is significant.

Second, 12% of the 49% that support him are leaners. A quarter of his support is soft, and ripe for the taking. Among likely voters, Shays and Farrell both have a base of 35% strong supporters.

Third, consider the timing of the poll. It ran from August 27-29, a month after Shays started running his tv spots. Farrell's ads didn't go up until September 1.

So in a campaign environment where he was the only guy doing paid media, Shays is up by only three points among likely voters. If I were him, I wouldn't be sleeping too well tonight.

Anonymous said...

This is one of these crappy automated polls. SurveyUSA and Rasmussen use them, and they're notoriously inactive. They don't make any kind of checks to verify that a legitimate respondent -- an adult registered voter -- is on the other end of the phone. the respondent could be a five-year-old kid, the garbageman, anyone. These results can't be considered credible.

Unknown said...

This is one of these crappy automated polls"

Actually, the guy (Mark Blumenthal?)who runs mystery pollster (now on pollster.com/blogs) was interviewed by Colin McEnroe after those two notoriously bad primary Q-polls before the senate primary. He said that while he traditionally prefered interview polls with humans, lately he said he's been coming around to the effectiveness of automated polls.

I personally hate both kinds though.

Anonymous said...

The Dems need to win both seats to take control of the House. Perhaps Shays has finally learned the art of running an effective campaign. Since the DCCC poll is closer, I wouldn;t draw too many conclusions yet about CD2.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous, while it does appear that Shays is taking Farrell a lot more seriously than he did in 2004 (he'd have to be an idiot not to), there is a crucial difference. In this election, Farrell has an enormous amount of money, which she will use in the last 10 days of the election to great effect.

Shays still has a name rec advantage against a relatively little known challenger. But the undecideds will swing to the challenger after the ad blitz.

Also, this poll shows the Dems picking up 13 seats, just two fewer than we need to win the House.

However, the poll only looked at 30 seats, failing to look at Tom DeLay's seat, Bob Ney's seat, or even Nancy Johnson's, all of which we know are threatened in the extreme. In fact, Tom DeLay's is leaning so strongly Democratic, that it may not be worth polling.

Between the races not polled, it seems likely that the Dems can pull off a net of at least another 5 seats, giving us a slim majority.

And this is in August/September, when most of the challengers are unknown. Even the incumbents in the lead are below 50%, which means it could get a lot darker for the GOP.

Anonymous said...

DOH. Evil Genius Rove has yet to fully unleash his fury on those unkown Democrat candidates

Anonymous said...

I've looked at the Courtney-Simmons crosstabs and found the poll sample for party is as follows:

ALL VOTERS

GOP: 26%
DEMS: 44%
INDY: 30%

LIKELY VOTERS

GOP: 24%
DEMS: 45%
INDY: 30%

that's NO WHERE NEAR the actual party registration in CT2.

So to date, Courtney is up one point in a DCCC-sponsored poll and 5 points in a poll that doesn't come anywhere near the voter makeup of district.

whatever floats your boat.....