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Feeding the hunger for House polling

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 6th, 2010 at 11:00 AM  | 

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House

I’ve given up on polling of individual House districts. Even if we see more than one poll of a given race, it’s usually all from the same pollster for the same client, a local newspaper or media alliance. These polls are erratic and without multiple sources to verify the figures, it’s hard to draw value from them.

So even though I’ll stick with the wide world of generic ballots to do my House analyses, I think some will be very happy to see The Hill’s new series of House polling of a dozen races and counting.

Typically when I’m asked about the polling of a particular House district, it’s by people wanting to know about their own representative. It can be hard not knowing how things are doing. People get so desperate they start using whatever metrics they can to judge the race: how many lawn signs they see, how many television or radio ads are running, or the like.

But a poll is something people can latch onto. Its cold, hard numbers, no matter how uncertain their value or unreliable their source, gives a sense of clarity. So I know my readers will enjoy seeing them, for whatever they are worth, and that’s why I link to them now.

Don’t expect me to look too closely, though. One poll, one time is all too often no better than a shot in the dark, and so I’m not confident enough about any one House seat’s single poll to get too worked up about it. That’s why I built the Swingometer, and it is what I’ll continue to use this year.

From Unlikely Voter

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  • IJB

    The full article can be found here.

    My favorite quote:

    But The Hill/America?s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) poll also detected a glimmer of light for Democrats; not one of the 12 Republican challengers has reached 50 percent, and half of them have leads so small that they are within the margin of error.

    Uh, no, sport, it’s the exact opposite – the fact that none of these incumbents is anywhere near 50% means they’ll lose.

    The latter article goes on to say the high number of undecideds means there’s “hope” for the incumbents. Again – when have you ever known ‘undecideds’ to break *to* the incumbent in an environment like this?! (Hint: The answer is “Never!”)

    Anyway, forget the ‘margins’ – again, what jumps out at me are these incumbents’ ‘top-line’ numbers: they’re awful!:

    AZ-01 – Kirkpatrick (D): 39%
    CO-04 – Markey (D): 41%
    IL-11 – Halvorson (D): 31%(!!)
    MI-07 – Schauer (D): 41%
    MD-01 – Kratovil (D): 40%
    MN-02 – Teague (D): 42%
    NV-03 – Titus (D): 44%
    OH-15 – Kilroy (D): 38%
    OH-16 – Boccieri (D): 39%
    PA-03 – Dahlkemper (D): 36%(!)
    VA-02 – Nye (D): 36%(!)
    VA-05 – Perriello (D): 44%

    Based on these numbers, *all* of these freshman incumbents are going to lose. The only ones who are even in the ballpark of hanging on are Titus of NV-03 and Perriello of VA-05 (this explains why the NRCC is advertising in VA-05 – it would appear that, despite SurveyUSA’s polls, this race actually *is* close!); and even those two are below 45%.

    Bottom line: I don’t see any of these twelve holding on. :D

    And Halvorson, Dahlkemper and Nye look like burnt toast… ;)

  • http://janicecantore.com Janice Cantore

    As I look at polls from around the country it seems apparent people get it and there is much to be hopefull about. But here in Ca, PEOPLE ARE STUPID! Boxer has to go but everyone I talk too will vote for her simply because they won’t vote republican. Same with Schiff, my parents live in his district and I have talked myself blue in the face, showed them Colbert and his credentials and how much better for them he would work than Schiff, but no go, Schiff is the democrat. And my parents have been directly hurt by the policies of this administration. I will keep doing what ever I can do this election but it is beyond frustrating.

  • Oz

    when I first become interested in politics.

    My favorite incumbent was ahead 45-39 in about September I thought that was pretty good.

    Until I learned about name recognition and where an incumbent is SUPPOSSED to be …

    One thing to note is that all of the races above are (or have been moved) to the lean republican category in RCP house land which now shows 210 GOP to 188 Democrat with 37 in the tossup category.

    We need 218 to take the house.

    If those guys are that bad off then the 210 is pretty solid so we’re talking about having to win 8 of 37 tossups ….

    At least a few of those are in states where the GOP is just going to wipe out the Dems ( 2 seats in Ohio ).

    So while the goose is not cooked yet, we’re closing in.

    It’s all about GOTV now.

  • rdelbov

    from Neil and IJB

    Stunning poll news–incumbents under 50% in house races are brown on one side and nearly cooked-nearly time to stick the fork in them.

    I will add a point to Neil’s analysis and that is polling in house seats is just very hard. Many people don’t know who their congressman is or what district they live in. Pollsters don’t have baseline polling-previous years info or partisan breakdown numbers or party ID info for most congressional districts.

    I will add that nearly every congressional district will be redone for 2012 so this year’s polling info (baseline stuff) is worthless in two years.

  • IJB

    It means there’s hope that they’ll be beaten. :)

    But, yeah – a significantly plurality of CA voters are reflexive Democrat partisans, and they cannot be talked into voting against a Dem, even if the Dems are verifiability corrupt, or convicted murderers, or whatever.

    That’s why the demographics of CA have to change before CA can change… :|

  • IJB
  • philhoganjr

    the demographics are moving in the wrong direction, as both families and businesses are bolting for tax friendlier states.

    california is in a death spiral. the state simply can’t survive the elections of brown and (to a lesser extent) boxer. unless of course bho and the feds bail them out.

  • proudmarinemom

    Here in VA-11.

    In addition to the occassional “Vote for Pedro” ” Vote for Summer” “Happy Birthday, Katie” signs, I see more Fimian signs than Connolly signs, but not nearly as many total as one would expect.

    Two years ago, I hated going out of the house because the Obama signs were as think as weeds in every traffic island and on every lawn. It’s vewwy, vewwy quiet around here. A little too quiet.

    Going to HQ today to get some more Fimian seeds which will sprout up mysteriously on corners overnight . . .

  • IJB

    …Stu Rothenberg is always handy to have around – he makes many of the same points I do above.

  • proudgop

    I live in NYC and its almost like there is no election this year compared to 2 years ago though Schummer, Cuomo, and Gillibrand just started on the airwaves.

    All the polls mentioned were good news interesting to note PPP has poll out with Gillibrand at 50 and DiGiodio at 44%

    Rasmussen has new poll on WV and Raese is at 50 to 44 for Manchin. The NRSC has run some great ads here indicating a vote for Manchin is a vote for Obama they seem to be extremely effective

  • proudgop

    so many states have early voting I read somewhere Ohio is already showing a very pro Republican turnout

    Calf just started any news coming out on turnout?

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens
  • Coop

    …is, I believe, more of a reflection that the Dem Pereillo has a huge money advantage over Hurt. The NRCC is also spending early, trying to put away people like Pereillo in the hopes that the DCCC will cut them loose while building its firewall around seats 25-50 (pick your own numbers) on the vulnerability scale.

  • Scope

    This is some polling I’ve done some research on. A Roanoake radio station had SurvetUSA do polling on the VA-05 race in July, and Periello was down by 26 points to R Hurt. They did the poll again a month later, and Periello was down by 23 points. Periello started screaming about the poll results, and, claimed that it was a useless poll. The Periello camp put out an article claiming that “even Robert Hurt’s campaign manager thinks SurveyUSA polls are useless.” They are basing that on the fact that SurveyUSA had Virgil Goode ahead of Perriello by 34 points in 2008. Goode was in fact way ahead of Perriello a few months out from the election. It tightened up in the last few weeks, and, I don’t know if SurveyUSA did polling of the race closer to the election. Perriello didn’t like the results, so he is crying foul.

    Perriello’s camp has been getting the info out there, in a Politico article, and on his website, and in the local newspaper saying they had their own poll done, and that he is in fact only a point or two behind Hurt. The polling outfits listed that have Perriello almost even were done by, Global Strategy Group out of NY, Benensen Strategy Group of NY, and a survey was done by Ayers McHenry and Assoc. of Richmond, I believe. Take a look at the groups that have the Democrat Perriello almost even-

    http://www.globalstrategygroup.com/main.cfm?actionID=globalstrategyshowStaticContent&screenkey=contentwide&htmlkey=people&nay=people&s=gsg2009

    Look at the bios of the people who are running this joint, and the candidates they represent, and, the companies they are involved with.

    http://www.bsgco.com/

    Benensen even has the O’s symbol up front and center-

    They claim- “Changing Minds” “Shaping events”
    “Events don’t shape you, you shape events.”

    They must be shaping Perriello’s message in his campaign because he is avoiding his record of voting for every Obama Pelosi bill, other than to have one add claiming that some organization has claimed that he is one of the “most independent” Democrats in Congress. Haven’t you heard that before?

    http://americanactionforum.org/files/VA05toplines.pdf

    I am not sure how those that were surveyed have answered questions that a majority believe the country is on the wrong tract, Obama Pelosi and Reid are not liked, 52% want new people in Washington, yet they put Perriello just a little behind Robert Hurt. It doesn’t seem to make much sense.

    Larry “the rug” Sabato, from UVA, with his crystal ball predictions said early last week that Hurt had the momentum, and the polls had him way ahead, therefore he made his prediction that Hurt will win. With the insistence, by Perriello’s camp that his internal polling info be used, and that the SurveyUSA numbers were bogus have “The Rug” now changing his mind, and giving the race back to Perriello. On local TV last night, another UVA guy said that the SurveyUSA numbers were suspect, but, that Perriello only being a point or two behind also was impossible, he said he would say Perriello was somewhere in between. According to him, Perriello is probably about 6 points behind Hurt. I’m not sure how he comes up with 6 points behind. I’d split the difference and say he is more like 12 points behind Hurt. The local radio host has been reporting where Perriello’s donations are coming from, and, low and behold one of the biggest supporters is in fact UVA. They have donated more than $50 grand to his campaign. In return, Perriello has earmarked millions for UVA research projects. My favorite of those projects- Researching why African Americans get total knee replacement surgery much less often than whites.

    There is a tremendous amount of angst against Perriello for telling the people in the district that he would not vote for Ocare if it included federal funding for abortions, and, then he went right ahead and voted for it anyway. He enraged the people also when he voted for Crap and Tax. There were many protests outside of his office with that vote, and he had the police come and disband the protests. He has had the police ban any protesting in front of his office period. He had to bus “paid” SEIU members in for his healthcare townhalls last year. One of them was interviewed by a local reporter as he was getting off the bus. He told the reporter that he didn’t have much time, as he had to get inside, because he was being “paid” to be there.

    Perriello’s ties to George Soros are widely and well known in the district. Perriello was listed for a year, as one of the 5 most vulnerable Democrat’s in the house for 2010.

    There is every possibility that the SurveyUSA polls are indeed accurate. And yes, he is at 44% as the incumbent. He will get Charlottesville for sure, but, I doubt that he will get the southside of VA, as unemployment rates are probably still hovering around 20% there, and, the jobs he promised those people are still no where in sight.

  • Scope

    from Boxer, and all Democrats because they have created the drought that has destroyed farming in that state, or at least a part of it.

  • Scope

    Looking at his donation report, ActBlue is listed as second with a donation of $37,250.

    http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?type=C&cid=N00029339&newMem=N&cycle=2010

    Looking at his info at the ActBlue site, it lists his donations as $438,556.

    http://www.actblue.com/directory/VA/all/fed-house

    I don’t know what dates the donation report included, but, according to ActBlue he collected $401,306. more than he reported so far. In 08 they were his biggest supporters. As a recent diary here indicated, it is a George Soros group.

    I’m fairly confident that his big money advantage will not be enough for him to buy the seat once again. Then again, looking at his report, every union in the country has given him bucks. He has been known to bus in, and pay SEIU members for his townhalls, why not the elections.

  • IJB

    But, then again, I haven’t really looked into it either. It just started on Monday…

  • jeffreywturner

    Seems they only look at things like the low OVERALL fertility rate among white Americans, instead of more important things like WHICH white folks are having kids and which are dying childless.