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NM-Sen: Pearce Surges in New Poll

by: James L.

Thu Aug 21, 2008 at 3:54 PM EDT


Rasmussen (8/20, likely voters incl. leaners, 7/24 in parens):

Tom Udall (D): 52 (61)
Steve Pearce (R): 44 (35)
(MoE: ±4.0%)

Big surge for Steve Pearce. But how does one spell "outlier"? This race has never been in single digits -- with the exception of a lone Rasmussen poll from February. It looks like the "Rasmussen non-bounce" may have struck again.

Has anything changed since July to make this an 8-point race? Pearce has taken to the airwaves in recent weeks, slamming Udall on the energy issue, and the Club For Growth nutters have joined in on the fun. That might be enough to bring Tomnotmark down from the 65% range, but you still have to figure that Udall is in commanding control of this race.

SSP currently rates this race as Likely Democratic.
James L. :: NM-Sen: Pearce Surges in New Poll
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NM-Sen: Pearce Surges in New Poll | 38 comments
What a lousy poll,
This poll looks like B.S. to me.

Waffle House celebrated its 50th anniversary and my steak celebrated its 25th-Larry the Cable Guy
Agreed
I expected Pearce to close the gap a bit, but this poll smells fishy.  Wait for confirmation from SUSA.  I'd venture to guess SUSA will still have Udall up 15-20 points.
[ Parent ]
Yeah,
If not 25%-30%.

Waffle House celebrated its 50th anniversary and my steak celebrated its 25th-Larry the Cable Guy
[ Parent ]
Rasmussen Must Be Wasted
Like I am right now.
[ Parent ]
can't complain and discredit polls
everytime they look bad for us. Looks about right. I knew Pearce would move in once a few million got spent in ads. He's probably just finally reunited the Republican base after the primary and that's the reason for the bump. I still don't see, demographically, how he could win it, he Udall will likely dominate their home districts by massive margins as both lean strongly to their parties and both are very popular there. That leaves it to Albuqurque. With a large minority population, mostly hispanic, a group Pearce will offen with his hardcore immigration stand, and a major University, I don't see how Udall could lose this district. Kerry won it, Obama's probably going to win it significantly bigger than Kerry, so...impossible. Pearce is just too conservative to win this state, especially now that it's trended to a marginally Democratic state in Presidential elections and a fairly strong Democratic state locally and Tom Udall is about as local a politician as you can get, (before he was elected to the U.S. House in 1998 he was a two term Attorney General, and his father was a famous New Mexico Representative, Steward Udall).  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
It's just one poll.
If there's one thing I hope that people take away from SSP, it's that you should never place your faith on just one single poll.

If we start to see this trend being confirmed by other pollsters, then yeah, it's real.

[ Parent ]
yeah, but polls don't have this
huge a whack bounce. There's usually a reason for it. I think SUSA, which is usually better for Democrats anyway, will show this race about 53-40.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
It happens once in a while.
Especially with Rasmussen, which has shown some pretty nonsensical swings in races like TX this year.
[ Parent ]
I believe TX
was competitive at one time...but....then Mikal Watts and his five million dollars were forced to get out the race for a popular netroots State Rep. who has come and proceedeeeeed tooooooo...not raise shit. You can't win a huge and expensive state like Texas with one million dollars raised. We should have stayed with Watts.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
Exactly.
     And what of Lunsford?  How's that campaign going?  Hardly anyone is paying attention anymore, because no one likes voting for vapid millionaires.

John McCain lets lobbyists shape his economic policy
[ Parent ]
i don't mind,
personall I think it's within a persons rights to fund their campaigns. I don't have a problem with it. Many good senators have self-funded in the tune of millions, Cantwell and Corzine are just a few recent examples.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
OK...
  But that's not the issue.  You're accusing the big bad netroots of pushing millionaire saviour Watts out of the Texas primary.  As you can see with Lunsford, millions does not make a good candidate.

John McCain lets lobbyists shape his economic policy
[ Parent ]
Mikal Watts was *forced*
Out of the race? LOL. Please cite a shred of evidence. Not only did he not make this claim, but I don't think I saw even a single supporter make this claim. He bailed, pure and simple.
[ Parent ]
Watts bailed because he didn't
think he'd be able to win the primary against Noreiga and still beat Cornyn in the general election.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
Yeah,
Texas was disappointing, but that does not mean that Noriega still can't beat Big Bad John Cornyn.

Waffle House celebrated its 50th anniversary and my steak celebrated its 25th-Larry the Cable Guy
[ Parent ]
KY-Sen was a good example
There was a poll Rasmussen put out on that race a few months ago showing Lunsford up by about 5 points.  Noone bought it for a minute and of course every poll since they has had McConnell up by around 7-15 points.
[ Parent ]
several have had
five to six point margins, and there were actually several polls that came out all at once, SUSA and others, that showed them four to ifve points from each other. Since, Lunsford hasn't done much and it looks like McConnell has campaigned some and brought his numbers up a bit. I never thought he'd lose, not with all his money and his legendary statewide campaign organization which is , by itself, probably stronger the statewide Republican party. But, what it does do is make him spend all his money at home instead of dumping into the NRCC to go to competitive states Democrats are trying to win.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
Rasmussen was still the only pollster to show a lead

And a 5-point lead, while not overwhelming, would still be a jaw-dropping number for a candidate like Lunsford.

By the way, there were two other polls conducted within two weeks of that Rasmssen poll, neithe rshowed the race to be within 5 points (granting that one of them was an internal poll conducted by the McConnell campaign).

The next Rasmussen poll then showed twelve points of movement, which doesn't normally happen unless there is something dramatic happening.

The same is true in New Mexico, nothing dramatic has happened here to explain this huge movement towards Pearce (yes, Pearce did go on the air, but Udall has been consistantly on the air since May). Absolutely nothing has happened here to explain numbers like this, period.



Your go-to source for great sarcasm
[ Parent ]
I have been hoping
That another poll shows this race at around 64%-25%. In the end, however, Udall should win this one around 79%-21%.

Waffle House celebrated its 50th anniversary and my steak celebrated its 25th-Larry the Cable Guy
[ Parent ]
this is my laughing face
sorry to hit you hard like that, but that is an utterly ridiculous margin, especially when Pearce is going to spend about five million of his own dollars. He'll win his own pretty conservative district by a good margin, and there are enough strongly Republican people in the state to give him at least 40% of the vote in this kind of race. If Tom Udall wasn't so liberal, maybe it'd be 38%. The real margin would be big if it's 59-41, (even Chuck Schumer wasn't able to pull that kind of a margin in New York, despite outspending a nobody who didn't campaign and didn't want to win, 13 million to one hundred thousand and being the incumbent). I say 54-46 for Udall right now, people stopped worrying about this race and grew complacent a long time ago, that's dangerous. Udall's still favored right now, but don't consider this one over by a longshot.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
This is a looooongshot for Pearcey,
Udall will certainly win. Udall's victory margin will be at the smallest 69%-31%. The middle margin would be at 80%-20%. And the highest, and more likely margin, would be at 85%-15%. Let's face it, Pearcey's campaign sucks like a sack of gumballs.  

Waffle House celebrated its 50th anniversary and my steak celebrated its 25th-Larry the Cable Guy
[ Parent ]
Pure curiosity.
But do you happen to have a record of your predictions for the 2006 elections?
[ Parent ]
Yes I do,
My 2006 predictions were the following:

PA-SEN: Casey Jr. 62%
       Santorum  38%

OH-SEN: Brown 59%
       DeWine 41%

RI-SEN: Whitehouse 54%
       Chaffee 46%

MO-SEN: McCatskill 53%
       Talent 45%

MT-SEN: Tester 52%
       Burns 45%

VA-SEN: Webb 52%
       Allen 47%

Waffle House celebrated its 50th anniversary and my steak celebrated its 25th-Larry the Cable Guy

[ Parent ]
So you were predicting races....
...when you were twelve?
[ Parent ]
Uh,
Yes I was.

Waffle House celebrated its 50th anniversary and my steak celebrated its 25th-Larry the Cable Guy
[ Parent ]
impressive, if truthful
a few years younger than me and I was pretty young when started...um, am still pretty young, but still...unlike others here I can't and won't criticize you for your age. I'm seventeen myself, as of like last week.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
Gee,
Thank's man.

Waffle House celebrated its 50th anniversary and my steak celebrated its 25th-Larry the Cable Guy
[ Parent ]
Knock it off please
Making absurd statements may be funny for awhile but it gets old quick.  70+ seat House gains, winning the NM Senate seat with 85% of the vote?  You cannot really be this uninformed.  
[ Parent ]
Eh,
Sorry man.

Waffle House celebrated its 50th anniversary and my steak celebrated its 25th-Larry the Cable Guy
[ Parent ]
Very doubtful but I like your optimism.
I think Pearce ends up at about DeWine levels of support -- around 43-44% of the vote. Maybe Udall can push his win to around 60% with a good GOTV.
[ Parent ]
Excuse me,
but what is GOTV.

Waffle House celebrated its 50th anniversary and my steak celebrated its 25th-Larry the Cable Guy
[ Parent ]
Get Out The Vote
Basically referring to the ground game and getting voters to the polls on election day.
[ Parent ]
And he definitely should!
with competitive races up and down the ticket all over New Mexico!

Bill Posey is not half-alligator...and is outclassed by Davy Crockett anyway: http://www.washingtonmonthly.c...
[ Parent ]
Agree with everything you said but
Stewart Udall...
A. Represented Arizona in Congress in what was at the time the Tucson-based 2nd district.
B. Only served 4 terms and is probably more famous for being the Secretary of Interior under Kennedy & Johnson. Mo Udall (Mark's father) is the one who was in the house forever.
[ Parent ]
I nearly fell out of my chair..........
....when I saw this poll.  My first thought--was this the Presidential poll by mistake?  But on further thought, I'm wondering--

a.  Pearce has gone up on the air, and Udall hasn't
b.  the energy issue
c.  McCain has campaigned a lot in New Mexico lately
d.  This was never a 26-point race to begin with
e.  All of the above.

My choice is e.  I think Udall will still win this, but it's not going to be a cakewalk.  He'd better start campaigning.

as I've said before,
and likewise with PA-11...

Take no race for granted.

Bill Posey is not half-alligator...and is outclassed by Davy Crockett anyway: http://www.washingtonmonthly.c...

[ Parent ]
Udall campaigns more in his sleep then most politicians do all week.
I'm serious about that. I mean the guy is criss-crossing the state every damn day. He's been to my little podunk town twice and I think is coming back in a few weeks.

I just got to say that I'm pretty sure its impossible for Pearce to win this race. Pearce has alienated a few key elements of Pete Domenici's coalition.

1. Federal employees at a number of military bases where Pearce voted to cut funding again and again. This is going to come out in newspaper endorsements which will probably all go to Udall.

2. Many Hispanics who are offended at Pearce immigration rhetoric. Many of these Hispanics, whether Dem or not, really believed that Saint Pete was Hispanic himself.

3. Moderate Dems, Independents and GOPers who supported Heather WIlson.

Because of his hard-righty ways, Pearce is not going to be able to piece a large enough coalition together to win the election. He may nab some of the moderate GOPers but Dems lead the state in registrations big time. 21 of the 33 NM counties have Dem majorities. I think I'll wait for another poll before panicking about this race.

[ Parent ]
A view from NM
I have always said this race would tighten as it got nearer to November.  The 25 point margin was not going to stay, everyone in the state knew that.  I'd been hearing that internal polls had it closer than 25 points.

that said, there are several problems with this poll.  For one, it's a single-day poll.  A single day when John McCain was in Las Cruces campaigning.  Then again, Obama was just in Albuquerque on Monday.

Udall has been hit hard by special interest groups on the radio for weeks and now on TV.  

The poll was taken the same time as a Presidential poll that has Obama up six -- about what everyone pegs New Mexico as right now.

So I'm of a mixed mind about this poll. If only SurveyUSA hadn't gone into hibernation and polled this as well for comparison...

New Mexico politics from the local perspective.

NM-Sen: Pearce Surges in New Poll | 38 comments

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