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A Poll I Don’t Believe

ArchPundit November 6, 2006 No Comments

Polimetrix has Blagojevich at 61, Topinka 39. 800 Person sample done for an academic consortium. My guess is the horse race part of it isn’t what they are really trying to analyze so take from it what you will.

The first obvious problem is they don’t seem to have polled Whitney, but also, I haven’t heard anyone suggest that Blagojevich would be anywhere near that high. But I offer it up since it’s out there. I’ll guarantee, he won’t get 61%, though there are scenarios he can break 50%. I don’t predict those, but they are possible.

Oh, And McKenna Used Conquest Communications

ArchPundit November 6, 2006 No Comments

Our very own Andy McKenna used Conquest in his race for Illinois Senate.

Interesting thing about them—they don’t actually do much legit work.

Now, put that together with liberals heart Osama and you see what the hell is going on.

Zorn on the Republican Mailers

ArchPundit November 6, 2006 No Comments

What’s great is how far people generally go to bend over backwards to claim something is similar to something else. Zorn shows an offensive mailer suggesting liberal Democrats want to withdraw from the battlefield against terrorists. One might find a few of these–usually on Fox News where they go out of their way to find such examples–but it’s not a significant group of people.

Many do make a distinction between Iraq and the War on Terror as do most Americans–so if that mailer is attacking anyone who can distinguish the two, it’s a minority position the IL GOP is arguing from.

But more to the point, Republicans are pulling out Robocalls and harassing people with them. Not just a few push polls about special interests that might be obnoxious, but hardly over the top, but making calls that seem like they are from the Democrat unless one makes it all the way through and making them repeatedly to the same house. One is not like the other. Attempting to make it seem like Democrats are harrassing voters with robocalls isn’t a push poll, it isn’t a GOTV message, it isn’t within the bounds the game should be played.

It is voter suppression. And it’s wrong.

Those who try and dismiss it as something that both parties are doing because both make robocalls obviously didn’t do well on the SAT section asking what is not like the other. Both efforts are easily distinguishable from one another and should be described as different by the press. As should the phone calls going out in different areas giving false voting information for where to vote.

More to the point, it’s something that does directly affect voter perception of the election and the press is largely ignoring it. When something is shaping voter perceptions the typical response of much of the press corps is to get competing quotes. The problem in this case is the action is taking place at the national level and everyone’s trying to avoid talking about it. It shouldn’t matter. They are taking place and they are harrassing. That’s a story.

McCulloch Poll in Pennsylvania Senate

ArchPundit November 6, 2006 No Comments

Since I posted the report on 14 I figure I should also point to this on McCulloch. McCulloch is a partisan pollster and was off on the Bean race two years ago, but he’s also done other polling that’s decent. I’d say something went wrong in PA for him though because he’s the only one showing any significant movement.

GOTV Illinois

ArchPundit November 6, 2006 No Comments

From the Hotline Blog

Some turnout nuggets from Dem congressional campaign sources:

GOTV rallies have been larger than expected: 6K showed up for Bill Clinton’s last-minute visit to AZ 05.

In IL 06, the DCCC canvassing program stormed through two days worth of precincts in less than one day

In IN 08, “huge numbers of volunteers” are showing up

600 volunteers spent Sunday making calls on behalf of Dem Angie Paccione in CO 04

The DCCC claims early vote success in FL (Hotline reporting, 11/6).

Pretty much confirmed in comments and e-mail here.

News Media—Irate Voters–mind telling them who is doing it?

ArchPundit November 5, 2006 No Comments

It’s getting worse on the robo-call front–someone–anyone cover this story in depth–please.

And btw, I had a Common Sense Ohio phone call today–though nothing on baby experimentation.

The Weird Thing about the Cubs line

ArchPundit November 5, 2006 No Comments

Judy made fun of the Cubs in Bloomington

“Maybe he ought to run for manager of the Cubs,” she quipped in Bloomington. “They’re a bunch of losers, too, and need some help.”

As a Cubs fan I have long learned to take ridicule, but it was perhaps the dumbest place to say it. There are no White Sox fans in Central Illinois. Actually I know one. One. Perhaps Miller counts as two now that he lives in Springfield.

Now, Central Illinois is about half Cards fans so that audience found it funny, but you might as well insult Presbyterians or something.

Judy, stop saying stupid things. Please.

Bill still lives there (Central Illinois broadly, though he hates Bloomington) and here is what he has to say

And she was booed. At her own rally.

How absolutely symbolic of her clueless campaign. I mean, exactly how many votes did she think she’d pick up by saying that?

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I fully expect to read tomorrow that she also made a crack about the Bears losing to the Miami Dophins, then topped it all off with a few dead baby jokes.

A good dead baby joke might do better actually.

IL-14 Poll

ArchPundit November 5, 2006 No Comments

Excerpts from Rod McCulloch’s poll of IL-14 are below. First, no head to head since it’s from a poll of only likely Republican primary voters. Hastert’s base is strong though from the results

Republican voters in the 14th Congressional District are still solidly behind
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, according to a new poll released Sunday.

The poll was conducted by McCulloch Research & Polling, and sponsored by a
potential candidate to replace Speaker Hastert, should he retire after this
election.

The poll of 400 likely Republican primary voters, asked if respondents thought
their Congressman should resign as a result of the Mark Foley scandal. An
overwhelming majority, 89.0%, rejected that idea. Only 3.5% of the respondents
thought that Speaker Hastert should resign.

The poll also showed that Speaker Hastert’s approval rating among Republican
voters is 87.4%, with 44.0% saying that the Speaker is strongly favorable.
43.4% of the respondents rated the Speaker as favorable.

The pollster, Rod McCulloch, said the poll showed that Speaker Hastert is as
strong as ever among his Republican base of voters. “Republican voters in the
district know the Congressman too well to believe the national hype about the
Foley scandal,” McCulloch said. “If anything, the Foley scandal has energized
the Speaker’s base, and they utterly reject Democratic allegations regarding
Hastert’s role in the matter.”

McCulloch said that while respondents were not asked about the election on
Tuesday, he said the results bode well for Speaker Hastert’s chances. “Since
this is a Republican district, it stands to reason that the only way that the
Speaker would be endangered is to be abandoned by his Republican base,”
McCulloch said. “It’s apparent that’s not happening anytime soon.”

“If and when the Speaker decides to hang it up, he is so popular among
Republican primary voters in the 14th District, that he will have a major say
in who is going to replace him in Congress,” McCulloch said. “All roads to
replacing him lead through Denny.”

The poll was conducted Oct. 26-Oct. 30.

The District has a Cook Partisan District of +5 and a Bush Kerry split of 55-44 in 2004. It’ s a Republican District, but only outperforms 6 by 2 points in terms of Republican Presidential votes.

Now, in theory 88% approval amongst Republicans could be a problem in a 55% District because that comes out to about 48% of the vote counting independents who voted for Bush. I’d say it’s safe to say that John Laesch isn’t going to light the District on fire so I don’t see any serious threat since Laesch has low name recognition.

Democrats should consider a strong candidate for the special election to replace Hastert if he resigns or for next cycle when he retires, however. One likely candidate is Chris Lauzen and given his thin skin, he’d be a good target if he were to make it through the primary. On the other hand, he will face competion for the seat so that’s a factor in attracting a quality candidate.

Had Enough?

ArchPundit November 5, 2006 No Comments

About that VFW Endorsement

ArchPundit November 4, 2006 No Comments

From the Spring VFW PAC publication (you can also find the October dated endorsement list):

When it comes to endorsements, the VFW-PAC Director, SalvatoreCapirchio, says “words aren’t enough.”

According to Capirchio, the VFW-PAC is exploring a number of changes to the 2006 endorsement
process—designed to take a more hard-line approach on which candidates to select.

“It’s not enough to say you plan to vote favorably for veterans—you must have a proven track record of being a strong ally,” continues Capirchio.

“We must know candidates’ in-depth perspectives on important issues.

Wehope to send ever eligible candidate a detailed questionnaire to probe the key issues. If they don’t respond to our questions, there should be no chance for an endorsement. A VFW-PAC endorsement speaks volumes about a candidate, and for that distinction, we will accept nothing but our strongest advocates.”

Capirchio says they are also discussing other changes, including changing the Endorsement Policy
so VFW-PAC can support challengers (as well as incumbents).

“The goal is to allow VFW- PAC to evolve with the changing dynamics of political landscape,” he
explains. “These issues will be explored further at our board meeting in March.”

Huh, sending out questionnaires to all eligible candidates? Seems like a strange standard given the Roskam campaign tried to sell it as being something they sought out and that’s how it occurs. Oops.

Another strange thing:

From the Sacramento Bee on September 10th:

Endorsements by the VFW PAC, however, are made on the basis of answers to questionnaires. Capirchio said the PAC is trying to broaden its coverage of veterans issues and this year sent a more elaborate series of questions to members.

Because Doolittle did not reach the threshold on the questionnaire, he was dropped from the endorsement list.

While Capirchio said the VFW is trying to expand its endorsements to include worthy challengers, this year its questionnaire didn’t make it out to all challengers. He said he doubted that Brown would have gotten one.

As a consequence, there is no VFW PAC endorsement in the race.

Roskam’s camp claims they didn’t know about the endorsement until November 1st yet the endorsement list is from October and other candidates started their announcments in early/mid-October.

The letter to Hulsoff in the above link is actually dated October 4th. It’s possible that the letters were staggered, but most places do their endorsements at meetings at one time so this is, let’s say odd. In fact, the 2004 endorsements made it into the VFW Magazine for October. On top of that, Bernie Sanders has been touting his endorsement since at least mid-October so something isn’t adding up here from the Roskam camp response that Rich Miller has up.