Tag: Campaign 2010
Poll of Polls: Obama’s Favorability in California at 59%
The average of the four most recent polls on Pres. Obama’s approval rating in California is 58.75 percent:
USC/L.A.Times, May 19-26; Rasmussen Reports, May 24; Daily Kos/Research 2000, May 17; Public Policy Institute of California, May 9-16
2008 election: Obama 61 percent, McCain 37 percent
USC/L.A. Times says Obama is seen favorably by 59 percent and unfavorably by 36 percent. Fifty-four percent want to elect a senator that will support his policies (with 44 percent “strongly” holding that view) while 35 percent don’t, with 11 percent undecided.
Rasmussen says that 55 percent approve of Obama’s performance while 42 percent do not.
Research 2000 says Obama is seen favorably by 62 percent and unfavorably by 33 percent with 5 percent undecided. Fifty-two percent say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate that supports or would work to improve the new health care plan while 37 percent would be more likely to vote for someone who would repeal it completely.
PPIC says 59 percent approve of the way Obama is doing his job while 37 percent disapprove, with 4 percent undecided. That’s 13 point drop in his approval rating since a year ago.
CA Primary: Don’t Buy the Beltway Pundits’ Hype, Dems Looking Good in November Matchups
By a whopping 27 points, California independent voters want a U.S. senator who supports Pres. Obama. In the governor’s race, independents support Brown over eMeg, 48%-30%.
When it comes to elections, as far as the national media is concerned, if there’s no horse race, there’s no story — so take with large measures of salt the punditry you hear on cable news tomorrow night about the supposed vulnerability of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., or the surging popularity of eMeg Whitman, the eBay billionaire who’s spent $500,000 a day in the Republican gubernatorial primary campaign.
Tea bagging has not caught on in California like it has in other parts of the country, in spite of the fact that Russo Marsh + Rogers, the Republican Party consulting firm that operates Tea Party Express, is based in Sacramento.
Granted, all the energy going into the vote tomorrow at the top of the ballot is among the Republicans, but this is because their Democratic opponents are running virtually unopposed. Other than fundraising, both Sen. Boxer and Attorney General Jerry Brown, the former governor who’s running for governor again, have hardly begun campaigning. Neither of them has yet to spend a dime on television ads, the only vehicle for getting political messages out statewide.
Based on recent polling it appears that the Republicans’ two biggest spenders, eMeg, one-time CEO of eBay, and disgraced former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, will trounce their opponents tomorrow and become the GOP candidates for governor and senator, respectively, in the general. Whitman has spent nearly $80 million of her own money, so far, and Fiorina has spent a third of the $21 million fortune she received as golden parachute when the HP board fired her in 2005.
Despite the well-publicized unrest and anger in the fly-over states, internals in a Los Angeles Times-USC poll that came out around Memorial Day show that Brown and Boxer have the wind at their backs heading into the general election:
NV Sen: Tea Bagger Endorsed by Joe the Plumber Leads ‘Chicken Lady’ in GOP Race to Challenge Harry Reid
Poll Also Shows That Sen. Reid Leads All Republican Candidates for the First Time
Earlier this year, Republicans announced they were targeting three “trophy” Senate seats — the seats formerly held by Pres. Obama in Illinois and Vice Pres. Biden in Delaware, as well as the Nevada seat currently held by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
The Delaware seat is likely to flip to Rep. Mike Castle, a liberal Republican, but Rep. Mark Kirk, the GOP candidate in Illinois, is having trouble, most of which stems from his service as a commander in the Naval Reserves. Not only has he been caught lying about his military record, his recent vote in favor of the military’s anti-gay “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy prompted a Washington blog editor to out him.
Now it appears Republicans may have gloated too soon about picking up Nevada. A new poll finds that now Reid leads all Republican opponents for the first time, and one-time frontrunner Sue Lowden has taken a major hit in the wake of nationwide ridicule of her proposal that the United States health-care crisis could be resolved by bartering medical services for live chickens:
Ill Sen: GOP’s Mark Kirk, Reeling from False Military Service Claims, Outed As Gay after Pro-DADT Vote
The other two trophies are the Nevada seat currently held by Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Delaware seat formerly held by Vice Pres. Biden. While Biden’s seat will likely flip to liberal GOP Rep. Mike Castle (one of the first Republican pols to be shouted down by tea baggers at town hall meetings last summer), Reid’s 12 Republican opponents, including “chicken woman” Sue Lowden, seem to be imploding one by one.
Kirk has held a single digit lead over Democrat Alexi Giannoulias in early polling. But even before he was outed yesterday by Mike Rogers, editor of BlogActive in Washington, D.C., the Kirk campaign was reeling from the revelation that Kirk, who is an officer in the Naval reserves, has claimed on more than one occasion to have received a commendation that in fact he’d never been awarded.
Update: Today Kirk’s campaign has acknowledged another misstatement about his service. A bio erroneously stated that Kirk served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. In fact, Kirk was serving in the United States at the time, so he actually served during, not in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
CA Sen: Fiorina Leads Tom Campbell 38% – 23%, Campbell Campaign Goes Dark Six Days Before Vote, Tea Bagger Trails Fiorina By 22 Points
With the California primary election in less than a week, the race to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer has taken a harrowing turn for Republicans. It appears that failed former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina now has an insurmountable lead over former Rep. Tom Campbell. The Campbell campaign reportedly ceased television advertising as of June 1.
In the 2000 U.S. Senate race, Campbell lost to incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein by 19 points, but Democrats considered him to be much more electable against Boxer this year than Fiorina, a self-financed political novice who was fired from Hewlett-Packard after a scandal that included allegations she wiretapped members of the HP board of directors.
Interestingly, in the month or so since right-wing celebrity Sarah Palin dissed the tea bagger candidate Chuck DeVore by giving her kiss-of-death endorsement to Fiorina, his polling has almost doubled, from 9 percent in early April to 16 percent now.
It’s hard to prove that Palin’s endorsement of Fiorina — whose gaffes as a McCain-Palin surrogate often dominated headlines in the 2008 campaign — has helped DeVore. It’s just as likely he’s gotten a bump among extreme right-wing voters from a web ad in which he compared himself to Jack Bauer, the lead character in the Fox terror-porn series “24.”
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AR Sen: Republican Leads Halter by 11 Points, Lincoln By 20
Lt. Gov. Bill Halter has taken a small lead over Sen. Blanche Lincoln in their runoff race for the Democratic senate nomination in Arkansas but both trail Republican Rep. John Boozman in general election match-ups, with Lincoln furthest behind, according to a Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll conducted May 24-26.
Halter is ahead of Lincoln 47 percent to 44 percent with 9 percent undecided. The margin of error was 4 points. The two were forced into a June 8 runoff because neither notched 50 percent in the primary, where Lincoln edged Halter 44.3 percent to 42.5 percent.
In the general election match-ups, Boozman leads Lincoln 58 percent to 38 percent with 4 percent undecided. He gets 90 percent support from fellow Republicans compared to 73 percent for Lincoln among Democrats, and leads her among independents by 65 percent to 29 percent with 6 percent undecided.
Boozman leads Halter 53 percent to 42 percent with 12 percent undecided. Their respective percentages of support among members of their own parties are about the same in the match-up with Lincoln, but Boozman’s edge among independents is a little lower, at 58 percent to 35 percent.
Will Republicans Take Impeaching Obama off the Table If They Win Control of Congress in November?
Now, four years later, with Republicans within range of winning control of the House and possibly the Senate, their tea bagger and neo-con base is sending an equally clear signal: They want Obama impeached, and they don’t much care how or why.
CN Sen: Despite Gaffe on Vietnam Serivce, Blumenthal Leads GOP Rival by 25 Points
About a week after acknowledging he “misspoke” about his military service during the Vietnam era, a new poll released Thursday shows Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal remains popular among Connecticut voters and maintains a double-digit lead in the race.
The Quinnipiac University Poll, conducted May 24-25, shows Blumenthal leading the endorsed Republican Senate candidate, former wrestling executive Linda McMahon, by a 56 percent to 31 percent margin in the race to fill the seat being vacated by the retiring Sen. Chris Dodd.
Blumenthal had led McMahon 61 percent to 28 percent in a March 17 survey.
“It looks like Connecticut voters forgive Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, or feel that there is nothing to forgive in the Vietnam service flap,” said poll director Douglas Schwartz. “While he has taken a hit with voters, his poll numbers were so high to begin with that he still maintains a commanding lead over Linda McMahon.”
Palin’s Note in Support of Haley is All About…Palin
Only Sarah Palin could take what should have been a note of encouragement and make it all about her. And how she’s been mistreated. And attacked. And lied about. And on and on and on.
Gosh, poor Sarah. I mean, poor Nikki. Whichever.
If you missed it, Rep. Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) is running for governor of her state, which is looking for one, what with the term-limited Gov. Mark Sanford off in Argentina pursuing affairs. So the last thing South Carolina needs is a governor who has affairs, right? Well, one Will Folks, a former Haley speech writer and now a conservative blogger, says he had “an inappropriate physical relationship” with his boss in 2007.
Haley is the tea bagger favorite in the race, and as such, has drawn the endorsement of former partial term Gov. Sarah Palin, who came to South Carolina to campaign for her. Now whoever writes Palin’s Facebook notes has posted an aggrieved statement ostensibly in support of Haley but basically all about Sarah.
