Posted on 08/31/2006 11:46:13 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee may lose his seat to challenger Steve Laffey, according to a new statewide Republican primary voter poll released today by the Bureau of Government Research and Services at Rhode Island College.
The survey was conducted August 28-30, 2006, at Rhode Island College by Victor L. Profughi, director of the Bureau of Government Research and Services. It is based on a statewide random sample of 363 likely Republican primary voters in Rhode Island. The sample was proportioned among the states geographic regions to reflect the likely voter contribution from each portion of the state. Overall, the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.1 percentage points.
If the September 12 primary were held today, 51 percent say they will vote for Steve Laffey, 34 percent support Senator Chafee, and 15 percent are undecided. A BGRS survey of Republican voters conducted in June had Laffey at 39 percent and Chafee at 36 percent. Chafees base is virtually unchanged since the June survey, while the number of Laffey supporters has grown 12 percentage points.
In the current poll, Laffey buries Chafee among male voters by nearly a 2 to 1 margin, 58 percent to 32 percent, with only 9 percent undecided. This gap has widened from 10 percent in June to 26 percent today. Among women, Chafees support has remained stagnant, while Laffeys has increased. In June, 37 percent favored Chafee, compared with the current 36 percent. Laffeys support among women has gone up from 35 percent in June to 45 percent.
Regionally, Laffey leads Chafee in Newport County (58 percent to 25 percent), in the Providence Suburbs (56 percent to 33 percent), Blackstone Valley (49 percent to 32 percent), Washington County (48 percent to 39 percent), and Western Rhode Island (42 percent to 37). Chafee is ahead only in the city of Providence (53 percent to 40 percent) and the East Bay (40 percent to 36 percent). Among unaffiliated voters, Chafees support has slipped from 49 percent in June to 43 percent now, while Laffeys strength has gone up 10 percentage points (31 percent to 41 percent).
Since early summer, Senator Chafee has been unable to expand his base of support from roughly one third of the likely Republican primary voters. The Lieberman phenomenon, where a partisan base closes ranks around the true partisan candidate, seems to be at work in Rhode Island, as it was on the Democratic side in Connecticut. Laffeys efforts to link Chafee with the extremely unpopular President Bush also appear to be paying off, said Profughi.
Respondents polled were also asked who they would vote for in the Republican Primary race for Lieutenant Governor between Reginald Centracchio and Kerry King. Nearly half of those surveyed are either undecided or will not vote on this race (51 percent). Among voters, Centracchio has a 2 to 1 lead over King (31 percent to 18 percent).
The survey was conducted at a centralized telephone bank on the RIC campus on Monday, August 28 through Wednesday, August 30, between 5:00 and 9:00 p. m. The sample of 363 voters consisted of persons who identified themselves as likely Republican primary voters. Those interviewed were randomly chosen from most recent updated voting lists provided by the Office of the Secretary of State and were limited to registered Republicans and unaffiliated voters who said they planned to vote in the Republican primary.
The sample was controlled to reflect likely voter contribution by geographic region. Survey design, implementation, and administration were supervised by Profughi, who has nearly 40 years of experience conducting public opinion surveys in Rhode Island. He and members of his supervisory and computer analysis team have conducted more than 1,000 surveys in the state since 1970.
Overall, the current poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.
My post caught my error a few seconds before you got your post up. :) The early bird gets the worm. :)
I should note, that I have bad feeling about Ohio, just like I have a bad feeling about Minnesota.
Well, at least Pawlenty has shored things up in Minnesota, which should minimize the down-ballot fallout. Ohio, on the other hand, is still very much flirting with GOP disaster.
fyi, santorum has about 5 million more cash on hand than casey and talent has a 2 to 1 money advantage over mccaskill.
when checking for idiots, I suggest the mirror rather than the NSRC.
Think before you hit the post button is the lesson here.
You moved down the vacant Kennedy seat? You don't think this put Kennedy himself in serious play for the Senate seat do you?
But, at the same time, it is probably still fair to set the over/ under higher than that. Probably somewhere between 4 and 5.
As of right now I think Klobucher is clearly in command of the Senate contest. In fact, I think that one is right on the cusp between Lean Dem and Likely Dem, but in such cases I generally default to the more competitive rating, which keeps it in Lean Dem.
The bottom of line of that point of view is that the bell curve tails are longer in the Dem direction than in the the GOP direction, which causes the mean to vary from the median. I agree with that. Good insight. The bell curve is not "normal" as stat folks would say - i.e., it is not symmetrical. It would by useful to distinguish between the two, but how many political pundits understand statistics, and think about mean versus median? :)
That poll also says that close to half of the voters here call the economy their top election issue, more than three quarters think a photo ID should be required to vote and two thirds think ballots should be printed in English only. I think the state is in play.
I do too.
"Yeah! It sure is a better use of resources to defeat RINOs than to defeat Democrats. Yep. That's the way to returning to the minority. Good thinking."
RINO's, Dems, no difference. Better an enemy you know than a back-stabbing ally.
I did a quick calculation of what tradesports would project as ab average result in terms of Dem gains. About 2.6 seats right now.
Sounds like it is time to bet. :) That combined with the lower of home prices in your neighborhood, should buy you a nice pad. :)
Low = decline of home prices.
I think for the most part they have done a good job calculating senate odds, reasonably good. But I agree with you that they are off by a decent margin right now. They have produced some really weird odds in Governor's races though.
I agree with you on that. If we said the Dems have a 30 percent chance of taking over the Senate right now, and then if God told me right now that MI was definitely going to be held by the Dems, that piece of info. would probably not bump their odds up to as high as even 31 percent.
Screwing the party is what he does best.
Well, let's see if we can turn the tables...
Cheers!
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