09/05/2002 Archived Entry: "NRO's Senate Watch; GOP GOTV: TV-Style in TX & FL"
National Review's John Miller Senate Watch needs a bit more homework. He says that there are 34 Senate races this fall, but only a dozen of them bear watching, and then he lists the twelve. He leaves out Arkansas: Pryor vs Hutchinson. Is the error due to the fact that the latest poll has Pryor up 51-41? No, don't be so cynical about the pro-GOP spin. I do agree with him on Oregon's Senate race being the sleeper.
If there is one race where the NYT's revealing focus on GOTV efforts that work is being put into practice, it's Oregon this year; and one of the beneficiaries will be Bradbury. And for back-to-back reads to get the "actions speak louder than words" effect, we go to Bushland. The Texas Victory 2002 fund, which kicked off the campaign season with promises to sign up 400,000 voters, has instead used $700K of their money in an TV ad buy that attacks Ron Kirk as too liberal-- I'm not making this up.
In Florida, an article with a really good wrap on the Governors race, with opinions showing how Bush's ad buys have helped McBride. For Bush, it was damned if you do - damned if you don't. Here's the Mason-Dixon poll numbers:
Replies: 3 comments
I'm under the impression that the Arkansas race was left out unintentionally.
Posted by Mr. Moderate @ 09/05/2002 08:49 AM PST
Over the years, I've always felt that Mason-Dixon polls were skewed a little bit in favor of the Republicans, but I never could identify anything specific on which to base that claim. However, the Florida poll just posted mentions that the survey was based on people who "vote regularly in state elections," which probably would oversample Republicans. I think the Democrats' traditional task -- in which they had success in 1998 and 2000 -- is getting people to the polls who DO NOT vote regularly in state elections (i.e., lower-income people, younger people). Also, yesterday's Political Wire reported some Texas poll results: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/1560010 . The accompanying newspaper article provided an extensive description of the poll sample's composition, both by party ID and race-ethnicity. I strongly applaud this kind of descriptive information (both in the Florida and Texas cases), as it makes the assumptions behind the poll clear and allows the reader to get a sense of how the results might be different under different sets of assumptions.
Posted by Alan @ 09/05/2002 09:33 AM PST
Your prediction of softening support for Bush among Republicans may be correct, MyDD:
Are Republicans Peeling Off?: A poll conducted nationwide from August 14-25 by the Pew Center has found President Bush’s rating down to 60 percent, a drop from 80 percent in January. Over the past year, his ratings have gone down with Democrats and independents, but this poll shows the first erosion in support from Republicans. In July, 93 percent of Republicans approved of the job he was doing; in August that was down to 83 percent - not a bad number but the first crack in the solid GOP support that we've seen. A CBS/New York Times poll conducted in early August had his overall support at 66 percent and his support from Republicans at 90 percent.
Posted by RParker @ 09/05/2002 11:48 AM PST
