State House Minority Leader Paul Davis (D-KS), a serious upset threat
The progressive activist group MoveOn just released
seven new polls, all conducted by Public Policy Polling, of competitive Senate and gubernatorial races. The main thrust of the surveys is a trio of questions about Medicaid expansion (it's popular across the board), but all of them lead off with horserace questions. Here's how they break down, with trendlines where available in parentheses:
• KY-Sen: Alison Grimes (D): 45, Mitch McConnell (R-inc): 44 (Jan.: 45-44 McConnell)
• VA-Sen: Mark Warner (D-inc): 49, Ed Gillespie (R): 35
• FL-Gov: Charlie Crist (D): 49, Rick Scott (R-inc): 42 (Jan.: 43-41 Crist)
• GA-Gov: Jason Carter (D): 43, Nathan Deal (R-inc): 42 (Feb.: 45-42 Deal)
• KS-Gov: Paul Davis (D): 45, Sam Brownback (R-inc): 41 (Feb.: 42-40 Davis)
• ME-Gov: Mike Michaud (D): 44, Paul LePage (R-inc): 37, Eliot Cutler (I): 14 (Nov.: 38-36-15 Michaud-LePage-Cutler)
• PA-Gov: "Democratic candidate": 56, Tom Corbett (R-inc): 34
Obviously all of these results are positive for Democrats, though it's not too hard to pick states ahead of time where you can reasonably expect to find good polling numbers. Put another way, there are no real surprises here, as the earlier polls all illustrate. The most optimistic bit of news comes out of Florida, where Crist has rebounded after what seemed like an outlier-ish January survey that had some strangeness in its sample composition. And the Kansas numbers show that PPP's earlier poll was no fluke. Like we've been saying all cycle, keep watching that one.