Dr. Bill Durston, a progressive Democrat running for Congress in California's 3rd Congressional District has just released a poll that shows that he is in a dead heat against the Republican incumbent, Dan Lungren.
We've just received great news from a poll of 500 likely voters conducted by the respected polling firm, Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, and Associates. Dr. Bill Durston is in a statistical dead heat with Dan Lungren in California's 3rd Congressional District!
When voters were asked who they would vote for if they were to vote today, 33% chose Lungren, 30%, chose Bill, 7% chose another candidate, and 30% were undecided. With a margin of error of 4%, the differences between Bill and Lungren were not statistically significant.
After hearing a positive profile about both Lungren and Bill, the tallies were even closer - 39% for Lungren and 38% for Bill. After hearing about some of Lungren's many shortcomings, including his Hawaii vacation paid for by special interests, his allegiance to the Bush-Cheney administration, and his fondness for taking money from Big Oil, voters chose Bill over Lungren by a margin of 43% to 34%, a difference which is highly statistically significant.
This news should bring more attention to the race for this seat. David Dayen from the Calitics blog wrote:
This could be a good time for outside groups to jump in. CA-03 is one of those under-the-radar seats nationwide that is very, very winnable, and a late push could easily put Durston over the top. Furthermore, he's a solid progressive Democrat who supports single-payer.
Once the voters of the 3rd Congressional District learn that Dr. Bill Durston is a decorated Marine combat Vietnam veteran and an emergency room physician, who has served both the country and his community, they will vote for him. They are even more likely to vote for Bill when they learn that their current Representative, career politician and carpet-bagger Dan Lungren, cares more about the big money corporate special interests than he does about the people of his district.
Hopefully, once the voters hear about some of Lungren's shortcomings, Durston will take the lead.
With your help, we will prove the politicos wrong and put Bill Durston into office!
SurveyUSA (9/30-10/1, likely voters, no trendlines):
Christine Jennings (D): 33
Vern Buchanan (R-inc): 49
Jan Schneider (I): 9
Don Baldauf (I): 3
Undecided: 6
(MoE: ±4.1%)
Polling has been all over the place in FL-13 just in the past month. First good old Vern released an internal that had him up 18. Then Jennings responded with her own showing her back just four. Research 2000 neatly split the difference, calling it a twelve-point race. Neither the R2K nor Jennings polls, though, included Democrat-turned-crybaby Jan Schneider, a three-time loser who seems to be digging her loser's share directly out of Jennings's hide.
Vern also poaches Dems directly. He scores a strong 76-11 among members of his own party, while Jennings takes just 62-19 from Dems. And he cleans up with indies, 43-25. Jennings has an extremely tough row to hoe in this district.
The one thing that stands out is at this point old hat for SUSA: voters 18 to 34 are Vern's best demographic, favoring him by a 57-31 split. I know the preference for Republicans among young voters in SUSA polls has struck SSPers of all stripes as odd if not completely off-base. But perhaps SUSA sees something the rest of us haven't.
A little history lesson may be in order here. I've been reading Rick Perlstein's utterly awesome Nixonland, which I can't recommend highly enough. He recounts that when the franchise was extended to 18-to-21-year-olds before the 1972 election, Democrats were convinced that this would be of huge benefit to them. After all, young people had been on the vanguard of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements and surely despised Tricky Dick. Yet Nixon managed to split the youth vote en route to a massive landslide.
Now obviously, the differences between 2008 and 1972 are too many to count, not least that many Democrats back then completely misunderstood Nixon's appeal. But either SUSA has made a huge mistake with its likely voter screen, or they've correctly identified trends among younger voters this year that most other pollsters have missed. We'll see.
The Rick Noriega campaign has sent out a fundraising email citing a recent poll that shows him trailing the incumbent Big John Cornyn by only 2%, among adults and with a large undecided vote.
Rasmussen is showing some good news for Democrats in North Carolina - both Richard Moore and Beverly Purdue are leading Republican Pat McCrory by 4-5%.
North Carolina Gubernatorial Election
Richard Moore (D)
39%
Pat McCrory (R)
34%
North Carolina Gubernatorial Election
Beverly Perdue (D)
42%
Pat McCrory (R)
38%
This shows improvement over December's poll:
In December, McCrory on top in both match-ups by an identical 42% to 39% margin. That survey was conducted prior to McCrory's official announcement to run in the election.
Anyone here know how reapportionment works in North Carolina? If we maintain our hold on the Governor's mansion and the state legislature, can we squeeze an advantage here after the 2010 Census?
Obviously, this is just one poll, and it could be an outlier. All of us regular SSP readers know better than to jump to conclusions just yet. But to go from a 20% lead to a 2% lead with a 4.4% MOE strongly suggests something big could be going on here.
Just how far has John McCain's stock fallen? According to a recent Rocky Mountain poll, he could face double digit defeat... in 2010. Yeah, even in Arizona, his home state, his popularity is less than 50%. The Rocky Mountain poll has popular Governor Janet Napolitano beating him 47% to 36% head-to-head. Napolitano is popular (59%), and could help downticket Democrats with a strong showing. McCain, on the other hand, is tied to an unpopular war, an unpopular immigration bill, and a really lousy attendance record.
(h/t Pollster.com - about 6 days old but I was on vacation and no one else diaried about it)
UPDATE: I guess that's why McCain's considering applying for public financing. The 100 million dollars he had planned to raise didn't come through, so now he'll probably take 6 million in federal funds just so he retire his debt. Anyone else think he'll save some of the money he raises from here on out to protect his Senate seat in 2010?
