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Wow! It's November!
8:21 AM PT: • NH-Gov (Marist): Maggie Hassan (D): 49 (47), Ovide Lamontagne (R): 44 (45); Obama 49-47 (51-44). Odd that Hassan's lead would increase since last month while Obama's would decrease.
• WI-Sen (Marist): Tammy Baldwin (D): 48 (49), Tommy Thompson (R): 47 (45); Obama 49-46 (51-45).
8:55 AM PT: NY-21: Remarkably, there are three new polls out of New York's 21st District in a single day—one Dem internal, one GOP internal, and one independent survey. And while Rep. Bill Owens leads in all three, the trendlines are not generally positive:
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Siena (PDF): Bill Owens (D-inc): 44 (49), Matt Doheny (R): 43 (36); Romney 49-45 (Obama 50-45).
• GSG (for Owens): Bill Owens (D-inc): 47 (50), Matt Doheny (R): 40 (36); Obama 49-43 (51-39).
• POS (for Doheny): Bill Owens (D-inc): 42 (44), Matt Doheny (R): 40 (43).
A few notes here. First, Doheny's poll, bizarrely, is not of likely voters but of "most likely" voters, a strange metric to use. And if that trendline from POS looks unfamiliar, it's because in his prior survey, Doheny actually trailed 45-40 among plain old likely voters. He didn't provide LVs this time around, which means his spread among them is worse. And since no one uses "MLVs," you have to really wonder if that faux term of art even means anything.
But that aside, both Owens' internal and the independent poll are not pretty. After holding a healthy 13-point lead (and sitting just shy of 50 percent) in Siena's survey, Owens has slipped quite a bit and now is ahead by just one. Siena's presidential shift is pretty dramatic, but the drop they see for Obama (nine points) is not too far off what Global Strategy Group found (six points). Owens' poll has his lead getting halved, from 14 to seven, which is less dramatic than his dozen-point fall in Siena, but the motion is downward in both cases.
As I noted, though, Owens still leads, and Doheny's "most likely voter" shenanigans betray a certain lack of confidence. But this one seems set to remain a tossup until the very end.
9:25 AM PT: Polltopia: Paul Krugman is someone whom I read a lot but probably have never had occasion to link before in the Digest. However, I think his meta-take on political analysis is spot on, and describes our ethos quite well:
Brad [DeLong] has fun with Jonathan Martin of Politico, who thinks that liberals will be deeply disheartened to learn that Nate Silver "admits" that he's mainly relying on public polls for his forecast. Of course, Nate has been clear about that all along—and what should he be doing? And look: the message from the polls is very clear: national surveys show a tight race or a slight Romney lead, but state polls—which are telling us about the electoral vote—show a clear if narrow Obama advantage in enough states to win the electoral college. Those polls would have to be off, systematically, by about 2 percent for Romney to win. So the odds are in Obama's favor.
Oh, and don't quote some poll or other that seems to say different. Polls have a margin of error (duh). This means that if there are a lot of polls, say of Ohio, sheer luck of the draw will produce a couple of polls seeming to tell a different story. That's why all the serious analysts rely on poll averages, and stick to those averages rather than picking and choosing.
But Martin's tweet also reveals a broader issue in reporting, which I've commented on before, I think (no time to search): the unhealthy cult of the inside scoop.
A lot of political journalism, and even reporting on policy issues, is dominated by the search for the "secret sauce", as Martin puts it: the insider who knows What's Really Going On. Background interviews with top officials are regarded as gold, and the desire to get those interviews often induces reporters to spin on demand.
But such inside scoops are rarely—I won't say never, but rarely—worth a thing. My experience has been that careful analysis of publicly available information almost always trumps the insider approach.
More at the link. It's not a long post, and the whole thing is worth a read.
9:31 AM PT: WI-Sen: Oh, Tommy:
So I left. I left the government after four years, after George Bush got elected the second time. And my wife likes to shop. Okay? And she said, "You know, Tommy, you have been in politics for 38 years. Why don't you go out and see if you can make some decent money so I can go shopping without having to put everything on a credit card."
9:37 AM PT: VA-Sen: Republican George Allen just lent his campaign $500K in its waning days, which is hard to read as a positive sign for his chances. The reality is, aside from weirdo conservative pollsters like Gravis or We Ask America, and the always-wrong Roanoke College (they started the race with Allen up 13 points!), you have to go back to mid-July to find Allen leading in any poll.
10:25 AM PT: NY-11 (Siena): Mark Murphy (D): 34 (38), Mike Grimm (R-inc): 52 (48); Romney 49-46 (Obama 49-45). Yet another Siena poll to find Democratic fortunes heading south. Unlike NY-21, though, this race hasn't really been in play for Team Blue for quite some time, if it ever was.
11:08 AM PT: NE-Sen: Not a bad get for Democrat Bob Kerrey: Republican ex-Sen. Chuck Hagel just endorsed him in the campaign's waning days. Of course the GOP is poor-mouthing Hagel, an apostate who left office in 2008 and has committed the sin of saying kind things about Obama—but I'd also point out that if Hagel's support truly meant nothing, then why would Republicans make such a big deal out of trying to convince reporters it means nothing?
Meanwhile, the last-minute ad spending has really heated up in Nebraska. The pro-Dem VoteVets is racing on to the airwaves, putting as much as $700K behind this ad which, like Kerrey's, attacks Republican Deb Fischer over a failed lawsuit she initiated against "elderly neighbors to take their land." And it turns out that American Crossroads' buy is much bigger than previously reported: $725K, not the $420K we'd seen mentioned before.
11:18 AM PT: OH-Sen: I just want to point out that negative third-party ad spending against Dem Sen. Sherrod Brown has now topped an absolutely insane $31 million—the most any Senate candidate has faced—and Republican Josh Mandel is still on track to lose. I just seriously hope that conservatives feel burned by how much money they've wasted on this race. Also, former Sen. (and national hero) John Glenn has recorded a very nice positive spot for Brown. It's quite the change from all the attack ads we've seen, and I think you'll like it.
11:38 AM PT: NY-25 (Siena): Louise Slaughter (D-inc): 52 (49), Maggie Brooks (R): 42 (44); Obama 53-40 (52-39). In their third poll released on Thursday, Siena finally offers some good news for Democrats, as Louise Slaughter has moved back out to the same 52-42 lead she carried at the end of September. And since the presidential toplines have remained flat, you know it's not simply a matter of a more favorable sample. I would guess that it's just the district's natural demographics coming back home, which makes attack ads against the minority party (in this case, the GOP) more effective than those against the dominant party.
1:15 PM PT: The Live Digest continues here.