A Monmouth University poll shows Frank Pallone leading Anna Little by 53% to 41% among likely voters, even though Little leads among independent likely voters by 51% to 38%; Monmouth risibly claims that Little leads among Republican likely voters by only 83% to 13% while Pallone leads among Democrat likely voters by 89% to 8%. But the biggest problem with the poll is that its likely-voter sample (by self-reported party ID) was 41% Democrat, 22% Republican and 37% independent, meaning that they oversampled Democrats and undersampled Republicans. I would guess that, in a poll with a sample closer to what turnout is likely to look like on November 2 and with Pallone not winning as many Republicans as Monmouth claims, Pallone’s lead would be around 48% to 46%, making this a much closer race than the pundits believe.
Here’s the poll: http://www.monmouth.edu/polling/admin/polls/MUP37_NJ06.pdf
An upset by Anna Little would be a major victory for the TEA Party.
It is all about turnout. Anna’s Army is a turnout machine.
I don’t think Pallone has the ground game to do a decent job of getting out the vote. This is going to cost him dearly on Election Day.
Little, on the other hand, has been working on the ground game since the day she announced before the primary. That is what got her past Diane Gooch, and that is what will get her past Frank Pallone.
Remember, the conventional wisdom was that Gooch would win the primary by 15 points. Where is Diane Gooch today? Do not underestimate the power of a competent GOTV effort. Anna Little has done this before. She knows how to get her voters to the polls.
In a case of Hell freezing over, Monmouth University responded to critics of its Democrat oversample that resulted in Pallone leading by 12% overall while trailing by 13% among independents (I guess I wasn’t the only guy who noticed that) and has admitted that it’s methodology was wrong in its NJ-06 poll. It corrected its numbers and now show Republican Anna Little trailing by only 9%, 51%-42%: http://www.politickernj.com/42096/little-camp-responds-monmouth-poll-adjustment
I think they still have too many Democrats in that sample, and with the type of turnout expected Little probably trails by only 48%-46% or so.