| The last gubernatorial debate was held last night in Great Falls, and there was all kinds of sparring between Schweitzer and Brown. Ho hum.
Ho hum? Yup, ho hum, what with the MSU-B poll showing Schweitzer with a 33-point lead and less than two weeks before the election.
All right, you know the drill, let's crunch those numbers! First, the trends among the latest polls:
10/24 - MSU-B: Schweitzer 60, Brown 27
10/19 - Research 2000: Schweitzer 57 (62/33), Brown 40 (41/51)
10/2 - Rasmussen: Schweitzer 56 (65/35), Brown 41 (45/48)
9/22 - Mellman Group: Schweitzer 63, Brown 24
7/31 - Rassmussen: Schweitzer 56 (64/27), Brown 32 (37/41)
Sadly, the MSU-B poll doesn't record favoribility ratings, but those polled did say Brown ran the "most negative" campaign, 30.1% to 12.8%.
And, really, there's not much to say about this poll, other than it feels like an outlier, especially when measuring Roy Brown's base of support. Still, it makes that Mellman report look a little better, doesn't it?
One note, the other day when I scrutinized the MSU-B poll for the presidential election, I wondered if they got the youth vote right, and that explained the positive results for Obama. Well, today I noticed this little line under "Statistically Significant Relationships":
Age was not related to vote intention.
Not sure what to make of that. Did the MSU-B poll get the youth vote wrong? Or are there too many polls showing the presidential candidates are in a dead heat among the young here in Montana? I'm betting the former, that polling in Montana has too stringent requirements for accurately counting young voters in the results.
Anyhow, outlier or not, it's apparent Schweitzer looks like a safe bet to win re-election, despite the best efforts of the GOP to manufacture controversey. In fact, so much so that Dan Testa is already speculating about how the current state budget surplus plays out politically in the next state legislature, a sort of tacit admittance that this election is over, and that the composition of the legislature is what we should be focusing on.
Which reminds me. I wrote up a "state of the elections" piece for the front page of the Daily Kos on Friday as part of a series called, "Listening Locally," in which state bloggers report on the important down-ballot doings in their respective states. Nothing new there, just an appeal to Kossaks to look over some of our local races.
With the election approaching, fast, it's time to remember what's at stake for the state in these legislative battles. The Capitol Blogger wrote up a couple of posts, one comparing the likely leadership teams of the two parties -- and if you love having middle-aged white guys calling all the shots, you'll love a Republican legislature -- and a peek into the Republican energy "policy."
Ugh. Double ugh.
So, are you ready for one last week of donating to candidates? |
