Can't believe people would elect a Sleestak to Congress.
Posted on 09/29/2006 11:59:26 AM PDT by americaprd
The first nonpartisan poll conducted in the 7th Congressional District shows U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon and Democrat Joseph Sestak locked in a statistical dead heat, with less than 40 percent of registered voters believing the Republican incumbent deserves re-election, according to political sources.
Sestak is leading Weldon 44-43 in a Franklin & Marshall College Keystone Poll that will be released today, falling well within the 4.7-percent margin of error. The poll of 430 voters refutes a recent Republican poll that showed Weldon leading by 19 points.
Democrats greeted the numbers as proof that Sestak has begun to have an impact on the electorate through nonstop campaigning and his first TV ad that hit the district two weeks ago.
"No one campaigns harder than Joe Sestak," said his senior campaign adviser, David Landau. "I just don’t know when he sleeps. He has more energy and more drive than any candidate I have ever worked for."
Weldon’s campaign said its internal poll puts the congressman significantly ahead and attributed the new numbers to negative mailings by the state Democratic committee and phone calls by liberal advocacy groups, known as 527s. The groups are named after the section of the tax code that grants them tax-exempt status.
While Weldon has tried to localize the race, focusing on his record of bringing jobs to the region, today’s Keystone Poll will show that the Iraq war is the salient issue in the district. Twenty-eight percent cited the war as their biggest concern, a higher percentage than any other issue, sources said Thursday.
Forty-nine percent of registered voters believe it’s time for change in the district and only 37 percent said Weldon deserves re-election -- a startling statistic for the 10-term incumbent. Thirteen percent are undecided.
"We’ve come a long way since Joe Sestak entered this race in February, and clearly his grassroots campaign has generated momentum," said Sestak spokesman Ryan Rudominer. "These numbers, from such a respected source, confirm what our grassroots campaign has been seeing out in the field every day. Voters of this district are eager for change."
Weldon spokesman Michael Puppio said he was skeptical of the results, with a recent Republican poll showing the congressman leading Sestak 52-33. The poll was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies on Sept. 12-13.
"That doesn’t jibe with our numbers," Puppio said of the latest poll. "Our numbers have us ahead with a comfortable lead."
He said the Keystone Poll is likely the result of anti-Weldon mailings and robo-calls and a report by the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that labeled Weldon as one of the "most corrupt" members of Congress.
"We have been positive and on message, and it certainly doesn’t appear that’s what the other side is going to do, so they can expect the same," Puppio said. "Curt Weldon is not going to stand there and get punched in the face by these 527s who lie and distort his record. He won’t take it. He will fight back."
Sestak, a retired Navy admiral, made his first television appearance earlier this month with a 30-second spot that focused on his national security background, opposition to the Iraq war and support for affordable health care. Weldon plans to hit the airwaves next week.
Rudominer said the poll shows voters are "rejecting Curt Weldon’s and President Bush’s stay-the-course policy in Iraq," while Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said it reflects dissatisfaction with Weldon’s ongoing pursuit of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Sestak has called for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the end of 2007, while Weldon has proposed a plan that ties the drawdown to the ability of Iraqi troops to operate independently.
National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ed Patru declined to comment on the poll until it is released.
In addition to the combined $2.5 million the candidates had raised through June, the close of the last fund-raising period, the national Republican and Democratic committees plan to spend at least a couple million each for TV ads in the 7th District.
Weldon received more than $200,000 Monday at a Springfield Country Club fund-raiser with former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. Sestak will get some extra cash today when Wesley Clark, a retired NATO commander and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, visits the American Legion in Clifton Heights. The books close Saturday on the quarterly campaign finance reports.
The Keystone Poll follows an April intelligence report, portions of which were leaked to the news media over the weekend, stating that the Iraq war is "shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives." A declassified section of the National Intelligence Estimate, which represents the consensus view of the 16 U.S. spy agencies, says the "Iraq conflict has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
The White House has declined to release the rest of the report, saying it would endanger U.S. agents and risk revealing the nation’s intelligence-gathering methods.
And that's before Bill Clinton comes in next Thursday to do a fundraiser for Sestak and Hillary the week after. Oh, and Wesley Clark is in town "endorsing" Sestak tonight.
Can't believe people would elect a Sleestak to Congress.
I wouldn't stress too much. Public Opinion Strategies had Weldon up by double digits last week. I use to work for them and though they work for Republicans, they're not what you call "partisan" and they don't engage in monkey business with their data, like inflating it to make their guy seem like he's got the momentum. POS has time and again proven themselves to be the most accurate of the campaign polling outfits. So the claim of this article that it "refutes" the POS poll I take with a REAL grain of salt. If POS says Weldon is leading by double digits, he's leading by double digits. They have a FAR better reputation than this Keystone poll, which themselves could be partisans using suspect methodologies to help the media's efforts to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that Democrats are going to take over the world in November. I'm not buying it.
Registered voters. zzzzzzz
The polls showing Republicans in trouble are much like predictions of an earthquake. Eventually, the earthquake prediction will be right. Eventually, the polls will be right.
However, so far the pattern since 2000 has been that Republicans consistently do poorer in polls that they do at the ballot box.
People have such short term memories. They forgot about all the polls showing Wayne Allard losing. They forget the polls showing Cruz Bustamante beating Schwarzenegger.
Man you guys in Pa have a lot of action this year.
Lynn Swann
Rich Santorum
Diana Irey
Buck County congressional races.
Should have any proplem getting the troops out to combat all the dead that will vote in Philly.
Oh please. 430 registered voters? You might as well take a poll at an NEA conference.
Polls with a margin of error of more than 3.5% are worthless. Also, this is a poll of a little more than 400 "registered" voters (the sample # is way too small), and we all know that polls of "likely to vote" and "most likely to vote" are much more accurate. Discount it.
Weldon is not in trouble, and the GOP will gain, repeat, gain seats in the House. Maybe only one or two, but they will gain.
Keystone poll = add 5 to 7 points to the pubbie.
The left is very afraid that the details of Able Danger will be revealed and their complicity in terror will be known to all.
Ping, Keystone Poll has Weldon down one
I am hoping, first timer Andy Mayberry (R) defeats incumbant Vic Snyder(d) but I cant find any evidence of it.
Among likely voters, Weldon still trails by 1, 45 to 44.
http://edisk.fandm.edu/FLI/keystone/pdf/Key7CD06summary.pdf
Oxymoron if I ever saw one.
i don't know. A Keystone poll released this week had Gerlach up 6 points -- which I think is about right. I don't see Gerlach up 13 or 14 percent.
It would be easier on Weldon if he'd had a tour in the Marine Corps of his own to reference. I'm always amazed at the number of able bodied Republicans that were too good to serve in uniform.
This doesn't surprise me. Weldon never recovered from attacking Sestak for having his daughter's brain tumor treated at a DC hospatal rather than a local one.
I don't remember if you posted on the other thread or not, but the Keystone Poll had Gerlach up 3 yesterday... so both are pretty close to tossup
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