May 19, 2004

60-40 FILES:

Scientific Poll: Senate Race: One of the most-watched Senate races in the country is already too close to call. (keloland.com, 05/19/2004)

Tom Daschle and John Thune won't be on a ballot until November. But our KELOLAND-TV/Argus Leader scientific poll shows most voters have already made up their minds.

And the numbers are almost even.

We polled 800 registered voters last week who say they regularly vote. Here's who they'd choose as senator if today were Election Day.

Our KELOLAND-TV/Argus Leader scientific poll shows 49% of voters would support democrat Tom Daschle. 47% would vote for republican John Thune. And just 4 percent are undecided. There's a three and a half percent margin of error.


Given that George W. Bush will carry the state by 20+%, there's no way Senator Daschle could win if the polls stay that tight. How are the Democrats looking with Hillary as their Minority Leader in 2005?

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 19, 2004 11:38 PM
Comments

Other sites have noted that Daschle has spent $8MM in ads to Thune's $0 and yet the polls show no improvement for Daschle. Assuming Thune doesn't make a big campaign goof this should be a pickup for the GOP.

Posted by: AWW at May 20, 2004 8:36 AM

Thune has money, and he will spend it. Many (count me in it) "out of staters" have contributed to his campaign which claims to have raised the most of any challenger for a senate seat this year.

Having said all that, I think oj's nation-wide coat-tails effect will require a significant turnaround in the President's approval rating. The truth is that the threshold of Busj's approval rating required to trigger a very comfortable victory over Kerry, and even an "electoral" landslide, is quite a bit lower than what would be required to pull senate challengers against incumbents. After all, all Bush to do is be a little better than Kerry, and even less if Nader steals some support in key states. But for the coat-tails effect to really kick in you would need to see Bush out-poll (by a decent margin) the state's favorite son/daughter. Possible, but not likely.

Posted by: MG at May 20, 2004 8:49 AM

MG - True, but like OJ and others I expect Bush's numbers to be noticably better by Sept/Oct as the US economy continues to strengthen and Iraq (hopefully) is calmer and less of an issue.

Posted by: AWW at May 20, 2004 9:12 AM
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