what concerns me about these numbers

Halter's already well-known statewide and on air in this cycle; this isn't like PA-SEN where we're still waiting for a regional challenger to the incumbent to turn on the jets.

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by: Adam B. @ Mon Apr 19, 2010 at 18:18:10 PM UTC

Yeah, and the key is Lincoln's Democratic favorables are good......

Lincoln's favorables among Democrats are 65-31.  Imagine if Lincoln's general electorate job approval was in the 60s; she'd be safer than Fort Knox, and only a sacrificial right-wing lamb would challenge her.  Of course job approval and favorability are two clearly different things, and I hate that Markos uses "favorability" in all cases when "job approval" is a more predictive measure regarding incumbents.  But still, favorability is worth something regarding incumbents, it at least always trends in the same direction as job approval.

Halter, to win the primary, has to peel off about one-quarter of Democrats who like the incumbent U.S. Senator.  That's really hard to do, as very few voters vote against their own party's incumbent they like.  For one example, the 2004 national exit poll showed that 90% of respondents who claimed to approve of Bush's job performance voted for him, and only 9% of that group voted for Kerry.  Halter needs about one-quarter, maybe a little more if Morrison is anything more than an asterisk, of Democrats who like Lincoln to vote against her.

I won't be surprised if Lincoln beats Halter by 20 points, and I expect her to clear 55% in any case.  She's obviously in the mid-40s now, and those voters won't bolt unless something happens to trigger a tsanimi of momentum that causes everyone to abandon her.  To get over the hump, she needs only a small percentage of additional voters who like her but have some doubts about her.

I'll say this, I have been thinking for a few weeks that ironically, it's possible the Halter challenge,, by attacking her from the left, ends up helping Lincoln by making her look less liberal and less friendly to Obama to the general electorate.  Chris Cilizza expressed the same idea just in the last day or so, saying the Halter challenge "energized" Lincoln's campaign, although he didn't make my point of the primary helping Lincoln by recalibrating her public image.  Lincoln is still a longshot in November, but I do think surviving the primary can only help her in the end.  The left has its chance to throw her out, and if she survives, by having given liberals a real alternative and showing it was not the majority's choice, the primary validates Lincoln and helps unite the party--which is what I think contested primaries actually usually accomplish, contrary to the more often discussed fear that they divide the party.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

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by: DCCyclone @ Mon Apr 19, 2010 at 19:01:33 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

TX-Gov Ras has Perry up 48-44 on white

Adjusting for bias White could actually be leading

http://www.rasmussenreports.co...

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by: lovespolitics @ Mon Apr 19, 2010 at 20:16:57 PM UTC

Rasmussen is bad enough a pollster that you shouldn't trust even good polls...

...for our side.

They had Deeds up 7 on McDonnell the day after Deeds won the Democratic primary last year.

And there are other sporadic occasions when Rasmussen has an outlier that's actually in our favor, instead of following the pattern of being cooked to favor the Rethugs.

But an outlier is an outlier, even if it looks good for us, and Rasmussen has too many to trust their polls these days.

I'd add that in the case of this particular Texas-Gov poll, as with all Rasmussen snapshots, it's a one-night sample with a higher margin of error than you see in most polls by most pollsters.

And I can tell you from looking at the crosstabs, they are pretty whacked out, showing White with only a 51-49 edge from the "other" race (which in Texas means mostly Hispanics), but outperforming with whites, the latter of which could be simply undersampling whites and having a higher margin of error there.

As much as Rick Perry leaves a bad taste in a lot of Texans' mouths, the white population in an anti-Democratic year is going to be pretty strongly Republican in its voting behavior, and it's hard for me to see a 4-point race as reality right now.

If another pollster corroborates this, I'll eat my words, but I'm afraid I don't buy it.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

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by: DCCyclone @ Mon Apr 19, 2010 at 20:37:09 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Rasmussen/Deeds

I think there is something there that suggests the method he uses tends to pick up an exaggerated bounce. He had it in CO when Hick announced. I think it probably has something to do with a tighter screen. Obviously Nate's latest piece goes into this in much greater detail.

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by: conspiracy @ Mon Apr 19, 2010 at 22:03:09 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It's

weird that Perry has a 60% approval but is only at 48% in such a Republican year. I've always thought we have a good shot in Texas, and a win here would really ease the burn of potential losses elsewhere.      

Proud member of the Indiana Democratic Party from IN-9.  

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by: hoosierdem @ Mon Apr 19, 2010 at 20:56:15 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Daily Digest?

Proud member of the Indiana Democratic Party from IN-9.  

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by: hoosierdem @ Mon Apr 19, 2010 at 21:01:12 PM UTC

Thanks

Sorry if I sounded whiny, but I need my fix.  

Proud member of the Indiana Democratic Party from IN-9.  

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by: hoosierdem @ Mon Apr 19, 2010 at 22:06:10 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Sigh

This poll makes me want to vomit, but it is a Rasmussen after all. So I really wouldn't put too much into it.  

http://www.rasmussenreports.co...  

Proud member of the Indiana Democratic Party from IN-9.  

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by: hoosierdem @ Mon Apr 19, 2010 at 21:12:58 PM UTC

Bowers has a good take here

http://www.openleft.com/diary/...

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by: conspiracy @ Mon Apr 19, 2010 at 21:35:11 PM UTC

[ Parent ]