Fun with pollsters

I just got a call from the American Future Fund with a push button poll.

 I told them I'm a 65 year old Republican  Evangelical Christian that attends church 14 times a week that voted for McCain in 2008 but will now vote for President Obama because he is doing a good job on the economy.  I bet that is discounted in their screening. This is not a real poll but a phishing operation so they can hit you up for money in the next few days.


HeidiEight also got this call.

Reloading Pennsylvania polls

Something screwy is going on with the polls on the sidebar. Every time I refresh the page the number of votes casts decreases. So I deleted them and put them up again. I hope that fixes the problem, we will see.

So vote again folks.

The question is who do you think will win the election not who you are voting for.

We start off with the national and statewide elections.

Will President Obama be reelected or will mittmentum sweep Governor Romney into the White House?

Can Tom Smith leave Bob Casey in the coal dust?

Do PA voters voters make history by electing Kathleen Kane as the first woman Attorney General  or continue the Republican streak by going for David Freed?

Please vote on the left sidebar and tell us your predictions in the comments.

Pennsylvania Polls

It's a tradition on Gort42 to put up some polls on the sidebar the week before the election. The question is who do you think will win the election not who you are voting for. I'll have my predictions next weekend. I put up 3 races to start it off and will list more over the next few days.

We start off with the national and statewide elections.

Will President Obama be reelected or will mittmentum sweep Governor Romney into the White House?

Can Tom Smith leave Bob Casey in the coal dust?

Do PA voters voters make history by electing Kathleen Kane as the first woman Attorney General  or continue the Republican streak by going for David Freed?

Please vote on the left sidebar and tell us your predictions in the comments.

Election polls

Very few scientific polls are conducted in local elections for the simple reason that they are expensive and very few campaigns have the money to conduct one. Even if they did the chances are that they don't have people with the expertise who know how to use the results to shape an election strategy.

I know the Wilkes-Barre Mayor's race has been polled (guess what camp did that) and Pittston Politics reports that Jackie Mo had a survey that showed her up big before Salaventis went on the air. In the last Congressional races the local papers paid for polls but they are not about to waste money on a municipal election. Besides, it looks like the Times-Leader can't afford it anyway.

Polling the Judicial races is pointless and trying to survey the races for seats on the new Luzerne County Council is impossible with so many candidates and without a model to build on.

Local bloggers decide to take up the slack .

The LuLac Political Letter

Here are the poll results we took for the General Election in 2011. As we indicated yesterday, the poll was among LuLac readers, it had 178 respondents, to our knowledge they only voted once and is presented as an unscientific sampling of the pulse of LuLac readers who follow politics as well as this blog site.

It's a tradition on Gort42 to put up some polls on the sidebar the week before the election. I'm not going to list multiple candidate races such as County Council and the Judicial contests. Altogether there are 35 candidates.

So we have 2 questions.

Who will win the races for Luzerne County DA and Mayor of Wilkes-Barre?

Vote on the side bar.

Looking to 2012 I have heard reports that the NRCC has polled the 11th CD recently finding that former 10th CD Congressman Chris Carney would top Congressman Lou Barletta by 5 points. I'm trying to get more info on that.

Speaking of local bloggers

Blog of the week
Harold Jenkins from NEPA Blogs talks to us today about "Gort42", the ultimate guide to local politics and local political blogs.

NEPA Blogs Flapdoodle

Good job folks, 3 out of 4 ain't bad

I asked you, the readers of Gort 42 to predict 4 races and you got 3 out 4 of them right.

From the sidebar

11th CD

Paul Kanjorski (D) 113 (45%)

Lou Barletta (R) 136 (54%)

10th CD

Chris Carney (D) 146 (69%)

Tom Marino (R) 65 (30%)

PA Senate

Joe Sestak 70 (49%)

Pat Toomey 72 (50%)

PA Guv

Tom Corbett (R) 110 (56%)

Dan Onorato (D) 86 (43%)


BTW, If you have a picture of Congressman Jim Nelligan please send it to me at gort42@yahoo.com

Pennsylvania Exit Polls

A grand total of only one poll worker was outside the Plains Twp. firehall when I was recorded as voter number 310 out of 1000+ at about 3;30PM today. She handed me a card urging me vote straight Democratic but I have never done that in the 32 general elections that I have voted in unlike my polar opposite.

I did vote for the Dems in 4 out of the 5 races on the ballot with the one exception being James O'Meara in the 121st State House contest. If James wins it will be the biggest upset in local politics that I can remember.

The Blogfather shares his deepest, darkest voting secrets with us.

Attack ads and polling

Negative advertising is nothing new as this clever video shows.

A tip of the tricorner to my FB friend and fellow Phils fan Karl for pointing this out.





I recently asked a longtime politico to put up a few positive spots reminding people why they should vote for his client and not just against the other guy. He said our "polls show that seniority and past accomplishments don't move the numbers this year. " Unfortunately that is probably true of any year. The truth is the negative ads work as my friend on the other side Dana recently lamented.

The campaign pollsters drive races these days and while you have to take any polling numbers released by a campaign with a grain of salt these polls are considerably more expensive and the methodology is more rigorous. If they tell their clients just what they want to hear and turn out to be terribly wrong future campaigns won't hire them. That is why I give more credence to polls conducted by the Dem outfit Momentun Analysis and GOP fav The Tarrance Group.

I don't really trust the public polls this cycle as polling is getting harder and more expensive to do as this story in my favorite magazine The Economist documents.

It is getting ever harder to work out what the American public thinks

The immediate problem is the rapid growth in the number of people who have only a mobile phone, and are thus excluded from surveys conducted by landline. About a quarter of Americans are now “cellphone-onlys” (CPOs) in the industry jargon, and this poses both practical and statistical difficulties... They often retain their telephone numbers, including the area code, when they move from state to state, so it is hard to know where they are. And it costs more to call a mobile phone in the first place.

Sure there creditable public polls such as Gallop and the Q Poll but much of the the rest of it is dime-store junk as Charlie Cook said.

Speaking of junk the Times Leader published a poll on Wednesday that it paid a company in Maine to conduct that came up with the opposite results of just about every other pollster. According to this rookie political polling operation Kanjorski is up 47-39% but just 2 weeks ago Barletta was leading by 2 points. I sure hope that they are right but I seriously doubt that there has been a 10 point swing in this race in just 2 weeks. In the 10th CD they have Marino up by the same margin as last time with a big undecided. Every other public and private poll that I have seen has Carney leading.

One candidate is not running negative ads and he just may win.

Latest PA Presidential polls

Muhlenberg Obama 52% McCain 45%

ARG Obama 51% McCain 45

Rasmussen Obama 51% McCain 47%

StrategicVision (R) Obama 49% McCain 44%

NBC/Mason-Dixon Obama 47% McCain 43%

CNN/Time Obama 55% McCain 43

Rasmussen Obama 53% McCain 46

Muhlenberg Obama 53% McCain 41

InsiderAdvantage Obama 51% McCain 42%




The National map

Obama 353 McCain 185

Dem pickups (vs. 2004): CO FL IA NV NM NC OH VA
GOP pickups (vs. 2004): (None)

Actually I think it will be bigger than this map suggests. John McCain will be campaigning in Arizona Monday, That's all you need to know.

Prediction: Barack Obama will be our next President.

I have a wager with a local candidate about PA and the election. Chris, I want my dollar on Wednesday.

Predictions

As I have done in the last few elections I will be asking you to predict the outcome on Tuesday. An added feature will be a poll on the sidebar. I will be posting my predictions in the 10th and 11th CD races and the Presidential contest over the next couple of days.

.

The Really Pissed Off Republican has already made his calls.

New PA 10th CD poll

Lycoming College


Chris Carney (D-inc): 50%


Chris Hackett (R): 35%


Undecided: 15%


(MoE: ±4.7%) 441 likely voters interviewed Oct. 19-23


Carney has a favorable rating of 54 percent and an unfavorable rating of 24 percent. Hackett has a 35 percent approval rating and 40 percent unfavorable.


Our friend Local Values has been keeping track of all the 10th CD polls and like RCP has been averaging them.

LOCAL VALUES AVERAGE: Carney – 48% Hackett – 34% Undecided – 18%



I've never seen a challenger win an election with higher negatives than positives. Hackett's line of attack of yelling liberal, taxes and he wears Nancy Pelosi's underwear doesn't seem to be working. An added factor is the left over hard feelings from the primary in which he trashed Dan Meuser and Pride Mobility making it difficult to unite the local GOP. Now after the Pat Toomey outfit, the Club for Growth, has sunk time and money into the race on his behalf he runs an ad starring Senator Arlen Specter. In 2004 Specter defeated Toomey in a bitter primary and the spot strikes me as a slap in the face of Toomey. What a great way to treat your friends.


Carney's campaign has been a mix of touting a positive message of his accomplishments and going for Hackett's throat. The 2 issues about Hackett that people in the district have told me that resonate with them is Hackett didn't pay his taxes on time and he employed a housekeeper who was an illegal immigrant. The Zoey Baird problem. And he doesn't apologize for getting earmarks, people like pork.


The Carney camp put out a press release today saying that they have raised over $2 million:


“We’ve exceeded all of our finance goals, and are proud of having raised over two million dollars this election cycle,” said Aren Platt, Congressman Carney’s Finance Director. “Congressman Carney has a strong base of support, which includes over 1300 grassroots supporters from our 2008 cycle.”


That compares to Hackett's $2.9 million of which $1.58 million came out of his own pocket. Then they got into the usual squabble over where the money is coming from and accusations of pay to play.

I think that the amount of money spent on election campaigns is obscene and a better way to fund them has to be found. But that is a subject for another post.


Rock Solid

Latest Pennsylvania Presidential polls

Muhlenberg (10/20-24/08, 601 LV) Obama 52% McCain 41%


SurveyUSA (10/21-22/08, 620 LV) Obama 53% McCain 41%

Strategic Vision (R) (10/20-22/08, 1200 LV) Obama 50% McCain 43%

Big Ten (10/19-22/08, 566 LV) Obama 52% McCain 42%


Quinnipiac (10/16-20/08, 1425 LV) Obama 53% McCain 40%


Allstate/National Journal (10/16-20/08, 412 RV) Obama 51% McCain 41%






The national map

Obama 375 McCain 157 Ties 6

Dem pickups (vs. 2004): CO FL IN IA MO NV NM NC OH VA

GOP pickups (vs. 2004): None

McCain hasn't led in any PA poll since April and is behind in every state that voted for Kerry in 2004. He needs to flip at least one state and the GOP camp thinks PA is his best shot. Mac will be tagging along with Sarah Palin for 3 stops in the Commonwealth Monday and Tuesday in Pottsville, Hershey and Shippensburg. This is the first election in my memory that both the Prez and VP candidates are appearing together this late. Let's call it the Geezer and Gidget tour. And Barry is not ignoring us with appearances scheduled in Pittsburgh Monday and Chester on Tuesday.

I have some anecdotal evidence that Obama will win this thing. I get my hair cut at an old fashion barber shop in Edwardsville who's majority of clientele are older gentleman. My barber is running his own poll of customers on the Presidential race and it's McCain 31 Obama 30. If McCain doesn't win an overwhelming majority of old white guys it's going to be a blowout.

Latest PA Presidential polls

Morning Call Tracking (10/11 - 10/15, 595 LV) Obama 53% McCain 37%

SurveyUSA (10/11 - 10/13, 516 LV) Obama 55% McCain 40%

Marist (10/05 - 10/08, 757 LV) Obama 53% McCain 41%

Strategic Vision (R) (10/05 - 10/07, 1200 LV) Obama 54% McCain 40%

Rasmussen (10/06 - 10/06, 700 LV) Obama 54% McCain 41%
.

Locally, the latest F&M poll in the 10th CD has McCain leading by only 46%-39% and Obama ahead in the 11th CD 47%-43%. If Mac is to win PA he needs big margins up here in the Alabama of the north.


The national map





Obama 349 McCain 171 Ties 18

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The most interesting thing that has happened in the past week is that North Dakota, Montana and Georgia are back in play. If you look at where the candidates are campaigning today it tells you what both camps are thinking. Barry is on offense with events in Missouri and Mac is playing defense trying to hold on to North Carolina and Virginia. Sarah Palin is in Lancaster, PA trying to shore up the Amish vote and increase Viagra sales in the area.

PA 11th CD update

Congressman Paul Kanjorski was in Washington working on the current economic crisis and to develop a recovery plan with Speaker Pelosi and others. During the forum, Kanjorski discussed with his colleagues the idea of including a "Buy America's Future Program" in a new recovery package. This program would facilitate the ability of all Americans to voluntarily invest in promising companies with new technologies.

On Sunday he was in Scranton and received shououts from Bill, Hill and Joe.


President Clinton said "Thank you Congressman Paul Kanjorski for being here. Folks, Paul Kanjorski’s got a tough race. He’s got a tough race because some people in his district believe that illegal immigration is a bigger cause of their economic problems than President Bush's economic policies. I got news for them and I've got news for you – you need to help him get re-elected. Thank you."


Hillary chimed in "I just want to reiterate what Bill said. We need as many Democrats in the Congress as we can get and we need to send Paul Kanjorski back to the House of Representatives."


Lou Barletta's camp say that they have topped $1 million in donations and that's all the money they need to win.


They are both scheduled to attend a forum this Wednesday at East Stroudsburg University.



In a new ad Kanjo takes on the Cornerstone issue calling Mayor Lou a liar and hitting him about the sludge being dumped around Hazleton.


Lou Barletta - Not on our Side






This just in via Wally Edge:


Research 2000 for Daily Kos.


10/6-8. Likely voters. MoE 5%

Barletta (R) 43% Kanjorski (D-inc) 39% Undecided 18%

And Obama leads McCain 47%-43% in the Pa-11th CD

Another poll in the 10th CD

The Franklin & Marshall College/Times-Shamrock poll shows Carney leading Hackett, a Luzerne County businessman, 39 percent to 25 percent with 36 percent of voters still undecided.


McCain only has a 7 point lead in the 10th. Bush won it last time by 20.


McCain and his running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lead Obama and his running mate Sen. Joe Biden 46 percent to 39 percent with 12 percent undecided, according to the Franklin & Marshall College/Times-Shamrock Newspapers poll. The poll, sponsored by The Citizens’ Voice’s parent company, surveyed 713 registered voters from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percent.

I'll break it down further if I have time later today.

The latest PA 11th CD poll

The Lou Barletta campaign has released their latest internal poll from Susquehanna Polling and Research.


Lou Barletta (R) 47%


Paul Kanjorski (D-inc) 39%


Undecided/other 13%


(MoE: ±4.9%) 400 likely voters interviewed Oct. 2


The re-elect number is 32% yes- new person 54%. Favorable rating 41% to 39% unfavorable.

No numbers on Mayor Lou's favorables.

The last independent poll from F&M also had Lou up by 9 over Kanjo.


There is a still a big chunk of undecided voters in all these polls.


Kanjorski has been a point man in the recent Wall Street bailout bill that Barletta sort of opposes. Kanjo defends his vote: “I’m a Democrat and I’m in a very, very serious campaign,” he told business leaders Friday. “The easiest thing in the world for me to do today or a week ago is to vote no ... But this is not the time to protect one’s tail, as we’d say in the game. This is the time for good men to stand up and be counted ... This is something that our society absolutely needs.”

Latest PA 10th CD poll

This one is from Momentum Analysis


Chris Carney (D-inc): 50%



Chris Hackett (R): 36%



(MoE: ±4.9%) 400 likely voters interviewed Sept. 29-Oct. 1



Carney has a favorable rating of 51 percent and an unfavorable rating of 24 percent.

Hackett has a 31 percent approval rating and 34 percent unfavorable rating.

New PA polls

F&M


Obama 48% McCain 43%


Quinnipiac


Obama 54% McCain 39%


Rasmussen


Obama 50% McCain 42%


Lycoming 10th CD only


McCain 46% Obama 37%


National

Obama 286 McCain 190 Ties 62

New PA 10th CD poll

LYCOMING COLLEGE POLLING INSTITUTE


Chris Carney (D-inc): 46%



Chris Hackett (R): 36%


(MoE: ±4.6%)


The Sept. 21-25 poll of 460 likely voters has 18% undecided.


In an interview, Carney called Monday's poll results a "reflection of what we've been hearing on the campaign trail from people from both sides of the aisle. I believe constituents are paying attention and appreciate my efforts down here."
Hackett, though, pointed out that Carney failed to reach the 50-percent threshold that incumbents facing re-election strive to reach.
"If you take these poll numbers as credible, Chris Carney at under 50 is a very troubling sign for an incumbent who has had two years to try to bolster his position," he said...Carney is "intentionally trying to mislead voters" into thinking he's a conservative, Hackett said. "If you listen to his rhetoric and watch the way he votes, they are two very different things. ... He may call himself a Blue Dog Democrat (a group of conservative House Democrats), but when he goes to Washington, he's a Pelosi puppy." ..."Mr. Hackett must have a very low opinion of the constituents of the 10th District if he thinks they're not smart enough to see honesty, if he thinks the wool is being pulled over their eyes," Carney said.

Pennsylvania 11th CD poll

A new Franklin & Marshall College poll has Republican Mayor Lou Barletta leading incumbent Congressman Paul Kanjorski by 9 points.


TRIBUNE-REVIEW:

Barletta is leading Kanjorski 44 percent to 35 percent, with 21 percent undecided, according to the poll of 547 registered voters in their northeastern Pennsylvania congressional district.

F&M hasn't posted the poll on it's website yet and that 21% undecided number jumps out at me. I'll check out the cross tabs and methodology when they are available.

Barletta is thrilled:

"Those results seem to coincide with what I've been hearing all across the 11th Congressional District: The hard-working people of northeastern Pennsylvania want a new congressman. They are tired of the same old, embarrassing antics and the dismal lack of leadership in Congress and they want change."

Kanjo spokesman Ed Mitchell (yes, he's still with us) casts doubt on the numbers:

Kanjorski campaign spokesman Ed Mitchell dismissed the poll. He said the sample was weighted too heavily to voters 65 and older and did not reflect voting patterns in the district where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2-1 margin.

"We are confident the voters will choose Paul Kanjorski, who has a record of standing up for working people in northeastern Pennsylvania, instead of Lou Barletta, who sides with George Bush's policies that have driven our economy into the ground."