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CO-Sen: Udall Extends Lead

by: Crisitunity

Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 4:48 PM EDT


Rasmussen (likely voters, 6/17, 5/19 in parentheses):

Mark Udall (D): 49 (47)
Bob Schaffer (R): 40 (41)
(MoE: ±4%)

It's a small bump, but Udall's lead has moved outside the margin of error. His favorability numbers also are way ahead of Schaffer's (56% very or somewhat favorable for Udall vs. 47% very or somewhat favorable for Schaffer, 35% very or somewhat unfavorable for Udall vs. 45% very or somewhat unfavorable for Schaffer).

I guess that's what happens when you don't know which mountains are located in your own state. Or what happens when you're pals with Jack Abramoff and David Safavian...

Bonus finding (James): Obama leads by 43-41 in the state, down from 48-42 in May.
Crisitunity :: CO-Sen: Udall Extends Lead
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CO-Sen: Udall Extends Lead | 34 comments
Sure Schaffer doesn't know the right mountain...
but in New Mexico, Pearce doesn't know the right Udall.

New Mexico politics from the local perspective.
Rasmussen
They are showing a very close race and a loss of ground for Obama in Colorado...I just don't buy it. Sometimes I think Rasmussen is doing weird things with his numbers, especially this election cycle.

-zak

It's a repub firm
What else would you expect?  Rasmussen's early election numbers always stink.  But they tend to be accurate over the last month or so of election season, which is when I'll believe their numbers.
[ Parent ]
usually they are 3 or 4 points under
for the democrat, Rasmussen's polls are a bit republican bias.
[ Parent ]
Their polls top to bottom have been weird
Some in our favor. In the KY-Sen race they had Lunsford over McConnell by 5 when every other pollster has McConnel up in the 5-10 point range.

They also gave Hagen a bizarre lead in one NC poll then had her down by 14 only a few weeks later.  Similar deal with Cornyn in TX

[ Parent ]
yeah recently they have been odd
but they usually are a few points in favor of the republican. just from what i've seen in past cycles.
[ Parent ]
Jeez, are there any reliable pollsters?
I don't trust Zogby, I don't trust ARG, and I have mixed feelings on SUSA, PPP, and Rasmussen.

John McCain: Healthcare for kids?  Not for a Bush-McCain America.
[ Parent ]
Poblano has researched that
Selzer (who?) is the best according to him, but SUSA and Rasmussen are right behind at #2 and #3.
[ Parent ]
yeah i'm a little tired of all these
Rasmussen / Internal poll bashing. RasmussenReports is NOT a Republican pollster, only that before his polling firm, he used to do polls for Republicans. It's egregious to compare it to something like Strategic Vision, and at this point in time his goal is to be the most accurate pollster, not giving a bunch of good numbers for Republicans. You have to judge Rasmussen by how close the polling is to actual reality, which is pretty good, but that's not to say they're without criticism, for example their long-standing outliers on Bush approval ratings (which he needed to revise by revising the sample weights).

Similarly, Internal polls are sometimes said to be the most accurate to reality... Granted, the main question here is whether or not the campaigns will release it - they usually won't if it's not impressive at all. Yes, it's true that sometimes you get internal polls which are way off from other public polls (like McConnell's, for example), it may be someone fidgetting with the sample sizes. For that reason you have to take some with a grain of salt. Yet still, these are pollsters that need to be rehired in the future, so they have reputations to uphold. Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, for example, is a Democratic pollster yet one of the most respected one in the biz.

[ Parent ]
Rasmussen is still one of the better pollsters
But as others have said, they DO have a slight republican bias.  Their track record verifies this.
[ Parent ]
Republican bias in the results
does not necessarily mean intentional Republican bias in their result-finding.

It may just be that their methods tend to skew their lens slightly in favor of Republicans.  Whether they correct this is up to them as a polling company, but...yeah, just saying.

Of course, it's always good to have a company that polls a little behind for us, for our own perspective on strategy.

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01

[ Parent ]
o yeah i never said it was conspiracy
you summed up my opinion exactly, their method tilts republican by 2-3 pts imo.

personally i think SUSA and Quinnapiac are the two best but that's my opinion.

[ Parent ]
Selzer
Does deadly accurate polls in Iowa.  The Des Moines Register poll is from Selzer.
[ Parent ]
Honestly...
SurveyUSA and Mason Dixon are in a class by themselves.  Those two I trust above all other pollsters.  Unfortunately those two firms don't start polling Senate and House races frequently until the last few months of the election cycle.
[ Parent ]
ah i forgot mason dixon
they are awesome
[ Parent ]
Quinpiac is also very good
but extremely infrequent. SurveyUSA results are amazingly close. They hit the nail on the head in 2006 with MT-Sen, OH-Sen, and MO-Sen. There results for IL-14 were also right on target.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
Partisan Identity
It's a matter of partisan identity. Rasmussen sets the party i.d. at the level it was last time, therefore, it 35% of the people who voted last election were Democrats, they make sure Democrats represent 35% of the polling sample. However, it seems that there are more Democrats this time around, which means they are underrepresented in the poll numbers.  
[ Parent ]
That's not the mark of a great pollster
It is my understanding that polling is most accurate when it is done completely random, with no pre-set conditions such as party ID.
[ Parent ]
I think it would best
if it had parties, demographic and racial layouts exactly equal to the distict.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
The polling is done randomly, and then
the results are weighed.  They all do that, to make sure the sample reflects the population of the whole.  There's no point in a poll if it turns out the random sample includes, let's say 50% of African Americans, because they're never 50% of voters.

SUSA and others have been changing the way the weigh the party ID to reflect a growing number of Dems; however, in some cases they may go too far (in my opinion).  Rasmussen is using the numbers from last time, which are sure to be off a few points in favor of the Republican.

[ Parent ]
nope
Rasmussen is not biased...used to be that he'd shave Republicans high within m.o.e. for "internal" polling, but that's standard fare in that business.

Rasmussen is correct that pre-2005 Undecideds almost always gave benefit of the doubt to Republicans.  His Bush approval polling is correct in that sense.

Even now, on the Right side of the 50% mark the Undecideds mostly lean Republican on benefit of the doubt.

Obama is running under 50% because Clinton neutralized the effect of moderate Republicans on Republican leaning Indies for a while.  (I bet she still gets higher voter percentages in polling than Obama does.)  Now that moderate Republicans are back with McCain, the centrist Indies are back between partisan poles and in that situation prefer to call themselves Undecided.  (Only about 40% of Indies are in that part of the spectrum, though.  About 60% are on partisan parts of the ideological spectrum.)  Obama's numbers seem to match the generic Democratic vote (48-49%), McCain's the generic Republican vote (43%).

Colorado gave Kerry 46%.  On 1% per year liberal/Democratic trend nationally, the state is ideologically a 50/50 split and a squeaker this year.  There's all this talk of Obama changing things so the ideological divide gets ignored, but other than higher black turnout (that neutralizes some of the higher white conservative Christian turnout) there doesn't seem to be a significant effect.

I'll be interested in what happens to the black vote.  Typically, max-out votes for a Party or candidate activate people who have, perhaps not consciously, avoided voting because they don't necessarily agree with how the groupthink says they should vote.  After the election they're often disappointed with the outcome, and when they get vocal about it they discover that a lot more people agree with them than they thought.  And the net effect is that they desert and go over to voting Indie or oppositionally.  I think of the aggregate 'Christian' vote that Bush's team activated and voted for him at a rate of 80/20 in '04, enough refused to vote Republican or in part even voted Democratic in '06 to shift their demographic vote split to 70/25 or so.

Obama's people are now registering a lot of black people in very socially conservative places- Lousiana, Texas, Mississippi.  The partisan split of black voters tends to be around 92/8.  I'll be surprised if that's the case 2-4 years from now.    

[ Parent ]
I have a Rasmussen/SUSA complaint
Both show Minnesota on radically different competitive levels.  SUSA constantly puts this in mid-single digits with their last being a 1% lead by Obama.

Rasmussen plus a Startribune (newspaper) poll have shown Obama with double digit leads, also consistently.

The SUSA polls show only a 48%-48% tie for the 18-34 demographic, which is absolutely impossible.  And the demographics of Minnesota resemble Washington and Oregon who both poll quite.

Ugh, polling firms.....  They should just make everyone practice vote like once every two weeks.  lol

[ Parent ]
Try polling using things like butterfly ballots and punch cards
It's like having students practice on scantron sheets.

Plus, you get the first-hand idea of what it's like to count votes.  Oh, do you count those ballots that seem to suggest something?  Dimpled, pregnant, hanging chads?  Confusing ballot notation leading to overvotes and undervotes?

Heck, why not pay attention to how many overvotes and undervotes there are?

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01

[ Parent ]
It Really Has Nothing To Do with Schaffer
Colorado's trend to the Democrats is not accident, and even if Obama is portrayed too much as a liberal, which apparently he isn't, Mark Udall will still win that Senate seat and the Dems may pick off Musgrave's House seat too if the numbers align.

Republicans have become the party of big government out there in the Mountain West. Their catering to big oil does not still well with a state where a good chuck were born outside the state and migrated there for its beautiful environmental conditions. Seeing what the last 8 years the GOP has offered, plus Obama's historical candidacy, should drive the numbers up in the Denver suburbs and the Front Range region for all Dem candidates in the state.

Well part of it is probably the type of republicans CO produces
Seriously, Colorado seems to produce nothing but grade A republican scumbags- Tancredo, Schaffer, Coors, Lamborn, Musgrave, etc.  
[ Parent ]
Yeah, those guys ARE scumbags...
but what's your opinion on former governor Owens or, heaven forbid he runs against Ken Salazar in '10, John Elway?
[ Parent ]
Owens is credible
One of the few somewhat sane repubs in CO.  I still think Salazar would beat him though.  

As far as Elway goes, who knows really.  He could be Colorado's Arnold (a big electoral success) or Colorado's Lynn Swann (massive failure).  Elway is a rockstar in Colorado, that's for sure.  But ya never know how those type of candidates will pan out in the political arena.  Unless Elway is a very moderate republican he probably wouldn't be much trouble, his fame notwithstanding.

[ Parent ]
if tom osborne can lose in nebraska
john elway can lose in colorado
[ Parent ]
Tom Osborne Lost In A Primary
In the context of a general election it could be different. Isn't that what Arnold did in California? I just want to make the point that sports figures pursuing public office is not a unique situation, at least in my opinion.

To use international examples, Ken Dryden from the Montreal Canadiens is a former federal cabinet minister. Pinball Clemens has been circulated as a potential candidate for Mayor of Toronto.

And wasn't former congressman Steve Largent (R-OK) a former football player too?

[ Parent ]
Also...
J.C. Watts, Heath Shuler, Jim Bunning, Bill Bradley... to name but a few.
[ Parent ]
yes
largent LOST to the current governor of OK when he ran for governor; i believe in '02(?)
[ Parent ]
LARGENT
is in the NFL hall of fame(jim bunning(senile-KY)is in the baseball hall of fame);j.c.(julius caesar)watts is in the college football hall of fame; watts is possibly the greatest triple option wishbone quarterback in college football history
[ Parent ]
yeah
People with the Colonial/Settlement Era overlord attitudes.  Treat the land and people as foreign overlords do- as material entities only for the exploiting.  Apply sufficient cultural nostalgia and religion as cover.  Pretty much the normal thing in the West since the Settlement- and pretty prevalent in a lot of the rest of the country too.  

Fortunately, real civilization is slowly reaching those parts.

[ Parent ]
Nice to see some daylight between these two...
It has been too close, considering the baggage Schaffer has lately.  
CO-Sen: Udall Extends Lead | 34 comments

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