After feeling frustrated this morning, I decided to do some digging and came across a recent poll released by The Missouri State University Poll Research Center. The poll shows Robin Carnahan currently down by 13.1% MOE +/-3.8% to Roy Blunt.
There are a few interesting nuggets to take from this poll, it was heavily weighted towards voters in MO-4 and MO-7. Now these districts are almost entirely rural with the exception Springfield and Jefferson City. In other words, this poll is favored towards rural conservative voters. In 2008, Missouri went for McCain by less than 4K votes. McCain did not carry St. Louis or Kansas City, both went for Obama. These two cities make up approximately 40% of the states population. So based on that alone, I think we stand a better shot than many of the polls show but what was interesting to me were at the end of the poll regarding demographics:
The Poll:
- As of today, how would you describe your political party affiliation?
Strong Democrat (11.3%)
Weak Democrat (5.7%)
Independent, lean Democrat (16.3%)
Independent (16.2%)
Independent, lean Republican (11.9%)
Weak Republican (11.9%)
Strong Republican (13.4)
Other party (9.0)
Basically what I take from this is that in this mostly rural area, there are plenty of independents who haven't fully decided who they are going to vote for. Things to take into consideration, folks in MO remember Robin's dad Mel Carnahan and remember things were better then. Missourians also remember Roy's son Matt and his less than stellar crack at governor. People here also dont forget that Mr. Blunt was more than friends with Jack Abramoff. The thing that Blunt has going for him is the carpet bombing of the airwaves and mailboxes. We are getting bombarded daily with US Chamber Crossroads GPS at every single commercial break(rough guess ads are 5-1 for Blunt). It's giving people election fatigue...
If you are in MO and want to GOTV, this is the time to do it. If you want to pitch in and help the campaign Missouri could use the help.
Roy is the one Blunt we dont want to get stuck with...