The EVT's story about a two-week-old poll
Weird story at the top of the EVT site today:
Goddard catching up with Brewer in final weeks of governor race
Gov. Jan Brewer’s large lead over Democrat Terry Goddard is eroding in the final weeks of a campaign that once looked like a runaway victory for the Republican incumbent.
The only problem: The only poll the story cites came out almost two weeks ago.
The story cites no other data.
8:29 AM
Jon Hulburd's new ad: "Ben Quayle has no business running for Congress"
The ad nicely captures Quayle’s frat-boy sensibility. One assumes the Hulburd campaign is buoyed by a new poll that sees him leading Quayle 46 to 44.
More interestingly, it put Quayle’s negatives at 52 percent, pretty high in a right-wing district.
The leading Congressional analysts aren’t buying it, but it seems smart to hammer on Quayle’s negatives, if that’s where the advantage lies.
3:03 PM
Laurie Roberts: The Arizona Republic's "go-to newsgal"
Yesterday PHXated noted that the Arizona Republic, in keeping with its feeling that its terrestrial readers don’t want to be bothered with uncomfortable news about Little Benny Quayle, did not include, in its printed edition, a report of a fairly notable poll on the Quayle-Hulburd race.
It said that Quayle was actually trailing Hulburd, 46 to 44, and that his unfavorables were at 52 percent.
While it’s possible the poll was what the big-time analysts call an “outlier,” some of its other findings—support for John McCain and such—were in keeping with the distric’s conservative makeup.
Anyway, the Republic was in a quandary: Having played down as much as possible the previous bad news for Quayle—mostly stemming from his unsavory association with a skanky web site when he could have, you know, been involved in any sort of public service that might make him qualified to go to Congress—it was even more difficult for the paper to write about a poll that showed a big chunk of the electorate was turning up it nose at the candidate, plainly based on the information the paper hadn’t wanted to get out.
Fortunately, Laurie Roberts, a columnist in the local news section, comes through again. It was she who, after the Republican primary was over, told people about Quayle and DirtyScottsdale.com.
Now she’s again columnizing about news that the paper itself has never vouchsafed to readers:
The poll, by Democratic pollster Public Policy Polling, surveyed 655 likely voters and had a margin of error of 3.8 percent. It showed Hulburd and Quayle in a dead heat with 10 percent undecided.
While both men were viewed favorably by a third of those polled, Quayle was disliked by 52 percent, including half of the independents surveyed. Hulburd, meanwhile, was disliked by 20 percent all voters surveyed, with 47 percent unsure what to think.
Interestingly, Roberts cites some evidence of a contention by New Times' James King … basically, not only that Quayle never lied about his involvement in Dirty Scottsdale, but that Politico, the online political magazine, is backing away from its initial contention that he did:
In a recent profile, Politico wrote that Quayle “has always admitted to writing some posts under a pseudonym”. That’s a far cry from its August story, headlined “Ben Quayle changes story about Dirty Scottsdale website”.
[Quayle campaign manager] Heiler says Quayle was responding to questions about whether he was involved in founding the website. The reporter, he said, never directly asked whether he had written for the site.
PHXated’s not buying it, for reasons delineated in the James King post but will look into the question of whether Politico itself is now downplaying what it once trumpeted.
7:46 AM
Public Policy Polling: Hulburd ahead of Quayle, 46 to 44
The Daily Kos-sponsored poll has some pretty interesting numbers, the most unexpected of which is Hulburd ahead by two points, 46 percent to 44 percent.
From the post, emphasis added:
Hulburd is winning independents 50-36, and moderates 66-27. While only eight percent of Obama voters are defecting to Quayle, 18 percent of McCain voters are going with Hulburd. And even 19 percent of Republican voters are choosing the Democratic candidate, likely an artifact of a nasty primary. In fact, Quayler’s favorable/unfavorable rating of 34/52 is shockingly bad for a first-time House candidate, and incudes 30 percent unfavorables from Republican voters, and 29/51 from independents. Hulburd is at 33/20, including 37/16 from independents. Yet given that half of voters have no idea what to think of Hulburd, he may be benefiting from an “anyone but Quayle” dynamic.
The big question: How will Ben Quayle’s apologist-in-residence at New Times spin the numbers?
The answer is here—and note how Quayle’s unfavorables aren’t mentioned.
2:00 PM
A new Rocky Mountain poll: Brewer-Goddard race tightening
The press release from the Rocky Mountain poll makes it sound like very good news for Terry Goddard:
Phoenix, Arizona. October 11, 2010. Incumbent Jan Brewer holds a three point lead over challenger Democrat Terry Goddard in the Arizona governor’s race and over a fifth of voters remain undecided (21%). Among those voters most likely to go participate in the election, Jan Brewer has a larger lead in the poll (eleven points) and fewer are uncommited (15%). The Libertarian candidate Barry Hess and Green Party candidate Larry Gist are far behind with just six percent of the vote between the two. The Green candidate Larry Gist may be pulling as much as five percent of the vote away from Goddard.
Keep reading, however, and you can see that among likely voters Brewer leads 46 percent to 35 percent. But even that is a big change from the twenty-point leads she routinely polled in August and September.
7:19 AM
McCain pulls away from Hayworth
The latest Rasmussen poll sees Dumb increasing his lead over Dumber:
Read down to the other questions asked in the poll, however, and you have to be a little bit concerned about not just the level of the political debate here in Arizona, but the overall ability of residents to process basic information:
Has the new immigration law affected Arizona’s image positively or negatively?
60% Positively
26% Negatively
4% No impact
10% Not sure
or…
Will the new immigration legislation be good or bad for the Arizona economy?
64% Good
17% Bad
9% No impact
10% Not sure
and …
Are economic conditions in the country getting better or worse?
7% Better
72% Worse
18% Staying the same
4% Not sure
7:21 AM
A new poll: Hayworth closing in on McCain
The new Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll has some interesting numbers.
They show plainly that, six months out, the Democrats' best chance for taking the Senate seat will be if J.D. Hayworth beats McCain in the GOP primary.
According to the poll, McCain beats the likely Democrat, Rodney Glassman, 48 to 35, with 17 percent undecided.
Between Hayworth and Glassman, the race is a real race… 43 for Hayworth, 42 for Glassman.
There’s a four percent margin of error in the poll.
But … can Hayworth actually beat McCain? It would seem a longshot.
McCain is unquestionably a bad senator, a bad person, and has squandered his dishonest-but-effectively-created image as a moderate and maverick by pandering to the vicious Arizona right
(For details, see PHXated’s “The Case Against John McCain,” a comprehensive look back at his career.)
Unfortunately, though, none of these are actually detriments in the Republican primary in a state like Arizona.
But the new polls shows conclusively that his popularity is dropping even there.
48 to 36 is still a good advantage for McCain, but it's four points less than he was polling a month ago.
The survey did a comprehensive look at all Arizona politicians, too.
McCain’s unfavorable numbers statewide are now about 50 percent.
He’s more unpopular than Hayworth, which has to be considered something of an achievement.
Most particularly, he has very high unfavorables among Democrats and independents … 82 percent and 60 percent, respectively.
But of course, he’s be a much more formidable opponent in November than Hayworth, a buffoon who could be made mincemeat of if Glassman—at this point still a political cipher—was up to the task.
Here are the overall numbers for Arizona politicians:
8:11 AM
New Public Policy Poll: McCain over Hayworth by 11 points.
From Pollster.com:
Public Policy Polling (D)
4/23-25/10; 387 likely Republican primary voters, 5% margin of error
Mode: Automated phone
Arizona
2010 Senate: Republican Primary
46% McCain, 35% Hayworth, 7% Deakin
Note that automated phone polling is not ideal.
Meanwhile, the Republic has posted a local poll from Behavior Research Center:
McCain leads Hayworth 54 percent to 28 percent with another 18 percent undecided.
In a potential general election battle against former Tucson Vice Mayor Rodney Glassman, the leading Democratic Senate candidate, McCain is ahead 46 percent to 24 percent with a significant 30 percent “uncommitted,” the poll says.
Hayworth also leads Glassman, who is not very well-known around the state yet, by 37 percent to 30 percent with 33 percent “uncommitted.”
This poll has a 5.7 percent margin of error; the two margins of error combined mean that both could still be quote-unquote correct.
Here’s Pollster.com’s current chart on the race:
11:06 AM
One of the more dispiriting things about the immigration bill...
…comes from this Laurie Roberts blog post yesterday:
A new Rasmussen Poll reports that 70 percent of likely voters in Arizona approve of the illegal immigration bill now on Gov. Jan Brewer’s desk.
Contrary to the national uproar, just 23 percent of likely Arizona voters oppose Senate Bill 1070, with six percent unsure. The poll of 500 people was conducted last week and has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
7:17 AM