ppp – Page 2 – Moe Lane

PPP’s Tom Jensen has a problem.

As in, how to shout out a warning without… actually shouting out a warning. In this case, he’s getting just a little worried about his fellow Democrats turning out. To put his findings in handy table form:

	Voters							Percent
	Estimated	% R	% D	R 2009	R 2008	D 2009	D 2008	R	D
VA	2.000	48%	44%	0.960	1.725	0.880	1.960	56%	45%
NJ	2.200	44%	51%	0.970	1.610	1.120	2.220	60%	50%

The voter numbers are in millions, and the percentage at the end represents the percentage of McCain/Obama voters of 2008 that PPP expects to vote in the 2009 elections. While this is not-precisely-horrible news for Corzine*, it’s not good news at all for the Democrats next year:

Maybe those numbers will improve some over the weekend- and Creigh Deeds and Jon Corzine certainly aren’t the best candidates- but if that pattern continues on into next year Republicans will win back the House.

The reason why is because there are a lot more Democrats in Congressional Districts that McCain won than vice versa: and there quite a few Democrats in districts that Obama didn’t actually win by all that much. It’s going to be interesting to see how the state legislature races in NJ and VA play out this year; the results might possibly be even more of a harbinger than those of the governors races…

Moe Lane

*It would be good news, if more people actually liked Jon Corzine. Or at least didn’t despise him.

Crossposted to RedState.

PPP: maybe DON’T GOTV for Corzine?

At least, that’s the impression that I’m getting from this PPP blog entry:

The voters under 30 in New Jersey in our latest poll reported voting for Obama 56-36 last year. But they support Corzine just 42-40 over Chris Christie this fall with 13% going to Chris Daggett.

In fact, in general I’m getting the impression that PPP is quietly operating from the expectation that Corzine will lose under current circumstances, and is trying to find some way of writing that without starting a self-fulfilling prophecy panic. Meanwhile, Q-Pac is saying Corzine +5; reconciling that number with them having Christie win independents 45/30 is left as an exercise for the interested student (see Geraghty for more along those lines). And, as usual, the uncertainty about the percentage of the vote going to Daggett is driving all the pollsters mad.

Moe Lane

PS: Chris Christie for Governor.

Crossposted to RedState.

Jim Geraghty now trying to buck up Deeds campaign.

They could use it: as near as can be determined, the eye-rolling thesis story pretty much did its thing, with no significant change for the last month, and Deeds is still losing the race for Virginia governor 48-43 with just over a month to go. So Geraghty’s sort of trying to cheer them up about it: who says that Republicans are incapable of pity?

Moe Lane

PS: The PPP poll, by the way, assumes that the voter percentages is better today for Democrats than it was in the 2008 election. It’s also showing that the downticket races are going along nicely. Well, nicely for Republicans.

PPS: Bob McDonnell for Governor.

Crossposted to RedState.

PPP: McDonnell/Deeds 51/37.

Looks like Obama’s campaign schedule is pretty much clear for the rest of the year.

[UPDATE] Gah! It’s like a glitch in my brain. McDonnell, McDonnell, McDonnell.

That was the response of one of my colleagues from the news that McDonnell has taken a commanding lead in the VA race (and the news that Christie continues to dominate Corzine); while there’s still three months to go before the election, and while Deeds did win the primary despite being the underdog, these numbers aren’t good for the Democrats. They are also roughly similar to last weeks SurveyUSA poll, which PPP itself notes:

The problem is all in who’s motivated and planning to turn out- McCain supporters are at a considerably higher rate than Obama’s, and that means a healthy McDonnell lead.

Last week I was skeptical of SurveyUSA’s poll showing an electorate that voted for John McCain 52-43…but we actually found it at a 52-41 McCain advantage.

None of this should be surprising: it’s an off-election year, the President will not be on the ticket, the economy is widely and accurately considered to be awful, and the current ruling parties of both states are widely and accurately seen to be part of the problem. Deed’s specific problem is that he got the nomination by not being Moran or McAuliffe… which wouldn’t have been a problem at all if the VA GOP hadn’t decided to run somebody credible. But the VA GOP did, and now comes the unseemly scramble on the Democrats’ side to hold the governorship. Continue reading PPP: McDonnell/Deeds 51/37.

PPP: Strickland/Kasich within margin of error.

Not that they noted that, really. But there’s still been some erosion of Strickland’s support in the last several months, whether PPP’s explicit about it or not:

43% of Ohio voters approve of how Strickland is doing his job as Governor, while 42%
disapprove. A January PPP survey found the numbers at 48/35.

Strickland’s approval among Democrats has dropped from 70% to 62%, an unusually low
level of support for a Governor within his own party. He’s also seen an increasing level
of dissatisfaction with him from Republican voters, 72% of whom now say they
disapprove of what he’s doing after just 59% did earlier this year.

Matched up against likely GOP candidate John Kasich, Strickland leads 44-42. He had a
slightly wider 45-39 advantage in January. Strickland is mostly hurt by a 54-33 deficit to
Kasich among independent voters, even though those same voters prefer a Democrat for
the Senate in numbers that PPP will release on Tuesday.

See Third Base Politics for more analysis (and Ohio Politics Online, on general principles). What I want to see is the next Quinnipac poll; both the March and the May ones were done back when there was an expectation that DeWine would be running for Governor. It’ll be interesting to see if the twenty point lead shown in both has dropped in the last two months, too.

In the meantime… as I said yesterday: Go Kasich.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.