Elephant Ears

This blog is dedicated to the political happenings in the Valley and Southwest Virginia. As the the name implies, this blog will have posts based on what is heard by this elephant's (GOPer's) ears. It is also a great treat to get while at the county fair or a carnival.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

New Allen-Webb Poll

The spin machine is in full force in the blogosphere over the WSJ/Zogby battleground polls released today, one of which being the Allen-Webb race. The poll shows Allen leading 49-44 which is down from 48-41 in March. Many GOP bloggers say this poll is useless b/c its an internet poll, its a liberal Zogby, and a host of other things. Conversely the Rasmussen poll is Allen leading 51-41, which some dems discredit b/c they say Rasmussen is a Republican and hes more favorable to GOPs.
Since its not clear, lets take a look a some other races to see how close they are.

WA Senate: WSJ: 48-43 Cantwell (D), Rasmussen: 44-40 Cantwell (D)
PA Senate: WSJ: 48-41 Casey (D), Rasmussen: 56-33 Casey (D)
NJ Senate: WSJ: 41-40 Menedez (D), Rasmussen: 40-37 Kean (R)
OH Senate: WSJ: 47-34 Brown (D), Rasmussen: 44-41 Brown (D)
MO Senate: WSJ: 49-44 Talent (R), Rasmussen: 43-40 Talent (R)

This shows 5 of the hottest Senate races in the nation with no clear picture as to who is better or who shows partisan leanings. Those who say Rasmussen is GOP cannot explain why he shows Santorum getting romped where "liberal" Zogby shows a reasonably close race in PA.

Averaging these two polling firms is probably a good indicator. If thats the case, Allen leads by 7.5, which is pretty accurate in my opinion. Webb has a way to go, but Allen has some work to do as well. Thats all today's poll tells us; which is what we already knew.

posted by GOPHokie @ 3:11 PM  

4 Comments:

  • At 6/22/2006 6:35 PM, Blogger Lowell Fulk said…

    When you work to be objective GOPHokie, you do a good job of analysis. I agree with you that at this point an average of both polls gives us some real idea of where this race currently is. I think that for Senator Allen to be hovering around 50% as an incumbent republican in a state that has not voted Democrat for president since Johnson should be troubling to the Republican Party. Especially since Webb is virtually unknown to most voters. President Bush's low approval rankings hurt Allen less here in Virginia than it might elsewhere in the country, but even here people are beginning to have some grave reservations about our current direction. What hangs in my mind is how Webb will play now that he is really in the game. He does have an uphill road by many measures. Allen has an enormous advantage in money. That advantage will be partially offset by the fact that he now must begin using some of that money to simply counter the wealth of free media that Webb will receive by virtue of his newsworthiness of being a former Reagan team member, a decorated Vietnam veteran (who probably doesn't have a group of fellow veterans ready to attack his war record) and the fact that he is a best selling author of philosophically conservative military novels. The fact that he has a son who is scheduled to post in Iraq is also strong.
    Allen is a well packaged candidate to be sure, but Webb also has that potential. This will be an interesting race to be part of.....

     

  • At 6/22/2006 8:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Dang, that was impressive. I don't like democrats but this guy cuts through the bull.

     

  • At 6/23/2006 9:22 AM, Blogger GOPHokie said…

    Thanks for the kind comments.

     

  • At 6/24/2006 3:09 PM, Blogger Lowell Fulk said…

    gophokie and lowellfulk have outlined the upcoming race really well. i Njoy both writers.

     

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