| There's been a paucity of public polling on the Third district race, but I'm quite tempted to call this one out of whack.
Why? Check out the internals -- SurveyUSA is exercising a decided Republican tilt on this race, and while most of their splits feel okay, check this one out:
| | Party Affiliation | | | Republican | Democratic | Independent | | Paulsen | 87 | 9 | 39 | | Madia | 8 | 79 | 43 | | Other | 4 | 10 | 15 | | Undecided | 1 | 2 | 3 | | Composition | 32 | 34 | 30 |
That is, SurveyUSA seems to think that the electorate on Tuesday is likely to be 34% Democrats, 32% Republicans, and 30% independent-with-a-small-i. Call me skeptical. Barack Obama at the top of the ticket is carrying heavy coattails going into next week, and the electorate is more likely to be closer to 40% self-identified Democrats than it is to be 34%.
The other number I have a hard time believing in light of all the other polling we've seen this year is that just 79% of self-identified Democrats are behind Madia. In an environment in which the Republican brand has been so drastically damaged by corruption, greed, and George W. Bush, Erik Paulsen's "I'll be a moderate" message just doesn't ring true -- because it's not. Using SurveyUSA's composition numbers, if Madia consolidates about 9% of those 19% SurveyUSA thinks are behind Paulsen or "other", that would be a nice margin of victory for Madia.
Nonetheless, this is a close race like we knew it would be -- go to Madia for Congress to find out how you can help win the day for Ashwin Madia.
Update: As I expected, a lot of the 4-point net movement from SurveyUSA's previous poll came within Madia's Democratic support numbers -- I find it pretty hard to believe that in the past three weeks, Erik Paulsen's support among self-identified Democrats rose from 5 to 9 percent. Statistical noise can be a powerful thing. Work hard, leave it all on the road (as Kos has become fond of saying at Big Orange), and make sure you do your part to win this thing. |
