If Republican Jaime Herrera is expecting to run away with the election in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, she better pick up the pace, for just a week out from election day, Democrat Denny Heck appears to have the momentum.
According to a new KING-5/SurveyUSA poll, Herrera now leads Heck 50% to 46%, with a +/- 4% margin of error. That’s a big difference from just two weeks ago when Herrera led by a 53% to 42% margin.
Cross-tabs aren’t available yet, but I was particularly intrigued by this analysis from SurveyUSA editor Jay Leve:
“Democrats today are more likely than in 3 previous polls to identify themselves as certain voters, and the party breakdown of this poll reflects that.”
Huh. That sounds to me like the expected Republican enthusiasm gap is beginning to narrow. And if that’s true, that would bode well for Democrats up and down the ticket. (Or at the very least, bode less ill.)
Maybe voters in WA-3, and elsewhere across the country, are waking up to the implications of putting the Looneytunes Party back in power.
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Yay!
They wouldn’t be in this fix if they’d gone with Pridemore.
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Pyrite…
Come on lets get real…Two days before the 11 point poll it was 42 – 40 Herrera.
Herrera will win 52.5 to 47.5
Gallup says the WAVE is big…
http://www.gallup.com/poll/144.....-Past.aspx
The Rs will likely have their last hurrah on Tuesday. Then, their lunacy, irresponsibility, and frivolity will finally become clear to swing voters. (The puppy barbecuers–the 30% or so of the electorate, like Cynny, Puddy, lost, LD–who would vote for an R if the R was barbecuing a live puppy and claiming it to be the patriotic thing to do, are excluded.) Just look what has happened to Joe Miller in Alaska. Integrity counts, wingies, and you ain’t got any of that.
Also, too. The DCCC is spending money in that race. I’d more or less written it off, but I’m happy to be wrong.
http://upper-left.blogspot.com.....lvary.html
SurveyUSA tends to be all over the board. They have also shown Rossi with substantial leads over Murray, and last year Hutchison was neck-and-neck with Constantine in their poll. They don’t tend to be used in very many markets anymore.
According to 538 Survey USA has a R+4.6 error rate in their late predictions on state-wide Washington races. Their error rate on Congressional campaigns is slightly higher and it, too, had a Republican bias.
It would seem that all the talk about an enthusiasm gap isn’t proving true. I don’t think Ds are going to lose the 3rd and give better than even odds at picking up the 8th.
Mary Plante is deluded. W3 and W8 will be red.
Oh–okay Bob. If you say so.
Now go back to the sandbox and play with the other toddlers.
Sabato says 55 GOP House pickups. Cook says 48-60 and makes it clear that it could be more than that. Gallup says no movement toward Dems in the last week nationwide.
No poll has had Heck closer than 2 down.
The national press is basically deciding whether Tuesday will be a GOP wave or a tsunami not seen before in our electoral lifetimes.
With all of that, is it reasonable to argue that, all poll evidence aside, WA will be outside this year’s norm?
That’s the view from my side of the sandbox, slingshot. Having a ‘feeling’ that things could be different might go along with that fingers-crossed posture the Left is assuming, but the posture they will be assuming on Tuesday will be pants down and bent over a barrel.
Bob @12,
Yes… WA will likely be outside the wave, whatever that means.
In 1994, WA’s House delegation flipped from 8-1 Democratic to 7-2 Republican. Now that was a wave. This year, the odds are that we’ll move from 6-3 Dem to 5-4 Dem, and I’d say we’re as likely to lose no seats as we are to lose two.
Considering that demographically, WA-01, WA-02, WA-03, WA-08 and WA-09 are all swing districts, Republicans holding one to three seats there is not indicative of a tsunami.
@10 Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?
Goldy@13,
First, thanks for weighing in.
The Left must have achieved their goal by putting enough pressure on Brian Baird to cause him to retire from Congress. Now they will lose that seat. Way to win a battle and lose a war, Left. Reichert is a shaky hold. Inslee has been there for more than a decade and Larsen a decade – they are entrenched. That both Inslee and Larsen are sweating it is testament to the strength of the GOP movement this year or, if you prefer, to the weakness of the Dem brand. It may not be a tsunami, but considering that the GOP as a party was gleefully being written off fewer than two years ago, a near-certain pickup of one seat and a possible pickup of two seats (three would be a little much to hope for) out of those five districts would be a pretty big smackdown of the Dem brand in Western WA, or at least testament to how quickly things can change.
Nationally, Dems are left to claim Pyrrhic victory because the GOP seems unlikely to take both houses. Obama’s seat – gone. Reid’s seat – gone. Biden’s seat – safe because of idiocy on the part of the GOP there but otherwise would be gone. Ohio – one of the major battlegrounds the past three presidential election cycles – will go bigtime for GOP.
My original point was that there is no polling data, locally or nationally, to give Mary Plante@9 a basis for her comment. It’s a red year. Wishing it were not so is laudable, although deluded.
Play up the Valle thing for all it is worth. Turn ‘Pure Vermont’ into a racist statement. Support the Libertarian candidate to siphon votes from the GOP. Whatever. You’re running out of time, and the bottom line is that you, as a Democrat Party and a progressive movement, have nothing positive to claim that is tangible and worthwhile to the electorate.
You do have a president whose sentiment on gay marriage is ‘evolving’, I hear, so at least there’s that. While he’s evolving he still has his foot on the throat of the gay rights movement, while claiming otherwise. Hopenchange, y’all.
“We do have a president……”, I should have said. Elections have consequences. My bad.
Funny you missed this data:
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....-1183.html
on the subject of closing. I mean, not so long ago you were talking up a poll showing a big Murray lead, so certainly this deserves mention in the same vein as Herrera/Heck.
Just sayin’.
Oh what are the new ideas?
Same as Bush AFAIK..
What’s McConnell’s primary focus for the next two years?? – Defeat of Obama.
Wow! Way to solve America’s problems there Mitch!
What will we see in the House? A Darryl Issa birther hearing??
GOP BOWEL movement indeed.
@18:
That’s a different argument than the above – would be better on a different thread.
Dems had plenty of stated ideas – closing Gitmo (still open), ending DADT (still there), supporting gay marriage (he’s ‘evolving’ and in a few years may be where Dick Cheney is now on that topic). They rammed through a shovel-ready stimulus over GOP objections, which did not much if any stimulating because it was a giveaway to special interests rather than a correctly targeted application of funds, they rammed through a toxic health care bill, again over the objections of a majority of the electorate, and it’s now blowing up in their faces.
Ideas and promises, when not pursued or perverted once the election is over, may just as well not be iterated to begin with, no?
I think the clearly stated goals of the GOP are to stop spending money stupidly and to undo the health care debacle. Check in with Cantor and Ryan if you want more specifics.
Obama has plenty of ideas, although he’s busy sowing fear into people over what will happen when his party’s ass is kicked next Tuesday.
Here’s my question, regarding his ideas:
Any reason to believe him anymore?
Just remember folks, 2010 is nothing more than a stage-setter for 2012. Obama has dug himself into a deep hole with his name-calling, “back of the bus” BS and other non-presidential actions.
Face it, the guy is an “activist”…not a “leader”. You KLOWNS keep grasping on to that Hope & Change BS he promised..you know, cleaning the cesspool like Rangel & Waters..stuff like that.
ImamObaMao==All Bullshit, all the time!
“Any reason to believe him anymore?”
He’s only been in office two years, which raises a better question. After being lied to about their so-called fiscal responsibility for thirty years, why on earth would you trust or vote for Republicans?
Just got back from phonebanking in Cowlitz County for Denny Heck. Democrats here seem to be waking from their apathy and I think Denny will do well in Cowlitz.