#ncsen: Tillis internal poll says TIE
Hagan 44, Tillis 44, Haugh 7, Undecided 5. The poll, conducted by Glen Bolger at Public Opinion Strategies, was conducted October 26-27 among 600 likely voters. It has a margin of error of +-4 percent. (I am going to chalk the document date of 10/22 up to being a typo.)
Here is Bolger’s take:
[…] Key Findings
1. This Senate race has been tight all of October, and is now tied.
It does not get any closer than this – Thom Tillis and Kay Hagan are tied at 44% each,
with 7% backing Libertarian Sean Haugh and 5% undecided.
Each of the first three weekly surveys in the North Carolina Senate race had Hagan with
a statistically insignificant two point lead. Tillis has caught up.
2. While neither candidate is beloved by North Carolina voters, Tillis has lower
unfavorables than Hagan does.
Kay Hagan has a 44% favorable/48% unfavorable image. Thom Tillis has a 39%
favorable/44% unfavorable image. Neither of those represent stellar numbers.
3. The political environment remains problematic for Kay Hagan.
Barack Obama’s underwhelming 43% approve/55% disapprove job rating is a big hurdle
facing Hagan. Among undecideds, Obama’s rating is just 25% approve/54% disapprove […]
We agree with Bolger’s bottom line: the race is a coin flip at this point. Whoever has their act together on the ground will carry the day (and the next six years).
One of the last things I did while still in the party was volunteer for a county commission candidate. Towards the end, I’d crunch the early voting numbers and give him increasingly confident predictions. He was running in an Obama year but I didn’t see him getting under 53% and told him around 55% looked likely based on some assumptions about the voters in his district and how the voting blocs tend to behave. And I nailed it.
Pollsters make a living on sample sizes of 1000 or so. When you have about 1/3 of the early voting in, it’s not that hard to project the outcome because it would take a major news event to shift the dynamics of the race.
My expectation right now is Hagan will get 50%-52% of the vote, Tillis about 43% to 45%. The Libertarian and the write-ins will get 3% to 4%.
The news on Nov 5 is not going to be about how a few thousand votes of grouchy Tea-partiers voted for Rhodes. It’s going to be about the very broad loss the party took in the senate race.
I see that the main numbers cruncher / campaign analyst at RedState is predicting Hagan by 3 points:
http://www.redstate.com/diary/davenj1/2014/10/27/midterm-races-north-carolina/
RedState is a conservative site but takes a position of supporting the Republican in the general, regardless. This is an analysis of how he thinks it will come out, not how he wants it to come out.
Tillis is an embarrassment. He should be stomping Hagan.
A good candidate running a good campaign WOULD be stomping Hagan. Instead we have a poor nominee running an inept campaign. ‘Nuf said.
Tillis must be really ticked-off that he has to ask all of these other Republicans from out of state to campaign for him. I agree, how embarrassing.
Looks like the stooges are back this morning with the same tired rhetoric.
Yes, indeed, you are!
Last night’s early voting totals continue to firm up how badly this campaign is going for Tillis. This is not like a local school board race where an orgniazed weekend effert could gather up a few hundred votes to turn a campaign around.
He is likely down by hundreds of thousands of votes. Spending yet more money on remaining air time isn’t going to change things. Everyone has heard all they can stand by now.
I had not seen those totals for NC. In other states with close Senate races, like Iowa and Colorado, from what I read, the early voting totals look good for the GOP. But then we have good candidates in those states and a united party. In Iowa, the GOP nominee, State Senator Joni Ernst, was endorsed by the Senate Conservatives Fund and Sarah Palin, and beat the NRSC’s choice who actually ran third in the primary, but the Chamber of Commerce later jumped on her bandwagon, too. In Colorado, other candidates already in the race voluntarily cleared the field for Congressman Cory Gardner and got behind his candidacy. Previous frontrunner for the Senate, District Attorney Ken Buck, is now GOP nominee for Gardner’s House seat.
Here are the early voting numbers in Colorado, a state that should have been harder for Republicans to win than NC:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/10/29/republican_ballots_lead_in_colorado_early_voting__124488.html
Could someone put up a link to the comparable NC numbers?
NC Early voting (includes Tues): 547,818
D: 49.2%
R: 30.7%
U: 20.0%
L: 0.1%
Black turnout is strong, so “D” defections should be low even though Hagan is not a popular senator. I think 95% support from the “D” base is reasonable, but even if you want to make more cautious estimates, call it 90% … Hagan doesn’t need many unaffiliateds to get over 50%.
My expectation right now is that Tillis is going to lose this by a larger margin than the Libertarian vote. The NCGOP won’t be able to spin this easily. I hope those of you who chose to remain in the party will badger the committees about how much money was blown on this race that might have made a difference elsewhere.
The conservatives have been so maligned by the GOP Establishment that it appears they are staying home and not voting. Who can blame them? These early numbers are simply awful and portend a disaster.
What really worries me about that is the races lower down the ticket. If Tillis’ fiasco of a campaign elects a Democrat Supreme Court we are in a heck of a mess.
But these turnout numbers should be expected. Hagan ran a campaign on issues designed to get her base to turn out, even if they were often irrelevant to the US Senate. Tillis avoided issues, and when he did get into issues, he ought pushed left, turning OFF the GOP base, and the surrogates he brought in also turned off the GOP base. Any competent campaign consultant should know that the key to off year elections is turning out your own base. Even Karl Rove knew that once upon a time, whether or not he still does.
What really worries me about that is the races lower down the ticket. If Tillis’ fiasco of a campaign elects a Democrat Supreme Court we are in a heck of a mess.
History will ask why was it that Tillis could not beat Hagan when he so easily defeated Brannon?
Of course the simple answer is “Karl Rove.” Evidently the mention of Karl’s name was enough to send the other primary challengers running for the hills.
How did such a sorry candidate such as Thommy Thillis so easily defeat Brannon?