Posted on 09/09/2011 7:10:13 AM PDT by AuH2ORepublican
Republican Bob Turner holds a six-point lead in next week's special election to replace disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., according to a new Siena College poll released early Friday that shows voters in the overwhelmingly Democratic district are poised to deliver a stinging rebuke to President Obama and his party.
Turner leads Democratic Assemblyman David Weprin in the poll, 50 percent to 44 percent. Six percent of likely voters in the Sept. 13th election are undecided.
Discontent with Washington and the president is at the heart of Turner's shocking upset bid. In a district he won by 11 points just three years ago, Obama's favorability rating is now upside down in the Siena poll, with 54 percent having an unfavorable opinion of Obama and only 43 percent viewing him favorably. A remarkable 38 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of independents hold an unfavorable view of the president.
The Republican also has all the momentum: A Siena poll conducted four weeks ago showed Weprin with a six-point advantage. Turner's lead does fall barely within the margin of error, but the poll shows that the GOP is on the verge of a most unlikely victory in the Outer Boroughs-based district, where Democrats hold a three-to-one advantage on the voter rolls.
But the Democratic registration advantage is tempered by the poll's crosstabs. Turner runs much stronger among Republicans, holding 90 percent of the vote, than Weprin does among Democrats, taking just 63 percent. Independents are overwhelmingly lined up behind the Republican, with 65 percent of them supporting Turner and 27 percent choosing Weprin.
Turner's own internal polling last week had shown a tie, while the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee touted a poll showing Weprin with an 8-point lead. But clearly the DCCC has seen that tenuous sign of hope evaporate too, going up yesterday with a half-million-dollar ad-buy slamming Turner in the closing days of the race.
All of the late money may not have much of an impact, however. According to the Siena poll, 79 percent of likely voters say there is no chance they will change their mind, and 17 percent say they are unlikely to change their mind, leaving just 5 percent who say they are "not very certain" or "not certain at all" in their vote.
Voters have a more positive view of Turner than they do of Weprin. Turner's favorable/unfavorable ratings are in the black (48 percent favorable/34 percent unfavorable), while voters are split evenly on Weprin (41 percent favorable/41 percent unfavorable).
Voters believe Turner is running the more positive campaign, leading Weprin on that question, 43 percent to 32 percent. Correspondingly, a plurality of likely voters believe Weprin's campaign is more negative.
Likely voters in the district are overwhelmingly pessimistic, with 74 percent saying the country is headed in the wrong direction; Turner wins a striking 94 percent of those voters. Mood toward the direction of New York is much rosier, though -- a 47-percent plurality say the Empire State is on the right track.
The economy remains voters' top concern, with 32 percent listing it as the most important factor in making their decision, including nearly half of Turner's supporters. But there is a possible beacon for Weprin: Medicare and Social Security isn't far behind at just 28 percent, and that's been the focus of late, with Democrats falling back to their successful strategy that helped win them a GOP seat in the western New York's 26th District this May.
Nearly half of Weprin's supporters say the candidates' positions on entitlements is driving their vote. But the poll shows that strategy has its limitations: Turner actually has a four-point lead among voters aged 55 and older, 49 percent to 45 percent.
The historical Democratic dominance in the district is evident in one area, however: By a 49-to-38 percent margin, likely voters think Weprin is most likely to win the election, including 23 percent of Turner's supporters.
The Siena poll was conducted Sept. 6-8 and surveyed 886 likely voters. The margin of error is +/- 3.3 percent.
Yes, it was Dan Frisa, and 1996 was the year in which McCarthy first won (DJ reminded me of the name and year in post #91). Frisa won in 1994 after defeating a less conservative Republican (his last name was Levy, but I can’t recall his first name), and in 1996 ran a lackluster campaign against McCarthy (IIRC Frisa didn’t even show up in his campaign HQ on election night).
I hope that redistricters expand Meeks’s NY-06 into Hempstead village and other black parts of Nassau, which would make what’s left of the NY-04 fairly Republican (even with the Nassau portion of the NY-05 being thrown in as well).
David Levy was the member from the 4th from 1993-95 (who was then defeated by Frisa in the primary). Hard to believe at one point McCarthy was mulling challenging Frisa in the GOP primary !
Another difference is that Rosty’s IL-05 had been carried by Bush in 1988 but had swung dramatically to Clinton in 1992, while the NY-09 has been carried by Democrat presidential candidates for years but swung dramatically to the GOP in 2004 (President Bush’s vote percentage went from 30% to 45% from 2000 to 2004, the largest swing in the nation) and didn’t move back towards the Dems in Obama’s NY lanslide. So Flanagan won the IL-05, as it was moving towards the RATs, in an absolute fluke; if Turner wins on Tuesday, he could conceivably win reelection if the lines are kept the same (and would do even better if the Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn precincts in NY-08 were given to the anY-09).
Speaking of fluke winners, guess who is running for LA Attorney General against the party-switching incumbent Buddy Caldwell ? Yup, you guessed it, ex-Congressman Anh Cao. http://www.caoforag.com/
The Democrats have fielded no candidates for that office, or for Lt Governor, Treasurer or Sec of State as of the closing deadline yesterday.
Fascinating choice. I don’t know which one to prefer
>> I can’t quite figure it out.
Apparently, the dem candidate is a real jerk with a counterproductive campaign. I understand Ed Koch is throwing his support to Turner.
When asked about whether his people spied Weprin said:
“I don’t know, I’m the candidate. I can’t control who goes to everything.”
What a guy.
I’d definitely vote for Cao, who has always been a Republican and has been willing to sacrifice for the conservative movement. Sure, as a sop to his liberal constituents in his hyper-Democrat New Orleans CD, he cast a vote for the original Obamacare bill (which included the Stupak-Pitts prohibition on abortion funding) after the Dems had gotten the 218 votes needed for passage, but he later voted against passage of the Senate version of Obamacare (the one that ultimately became law). Caldwell, on the other hand, enabled LA Democrats like Sen. Landrieu and Gov. Blanco for decades, and only last year, when it was obvious that the D next to his name would sink his reelection, did he switch to the GOP. I would support Caldwell against a Democrat, or against a liberal Republican, or perhaps even against a conservative Republican in a GOP primary (assuming that LA had party primaries) whom I thought would lose the general, but in a one-on-one contest against a conservative (albeit not perfect) Republican such as Cao, I’d prefer Cao.
It is easy to get hung up on one, largely symbolic, vote by Cao, and I was upset about Cao’s original Obamacare vote as the next guy, but how many decisions did Caldwell make in his many years as a Democrat officeholder that would make our skin crawl if we knew about them? And Caldwell didn’t switch to the GOP back in the 1980s, he switched in the 2010s!
I can’t imagine Cao even has that much money to run in the race, which is only a month away. If he gets above 40% against Caldwell, I’ll be surprised.
Democrat pollster PPP just released poll of likely NY-09 voters showing Bob Turner leading Weprin by 47%-41% (with 4% for the Socialist Workers Party candidate and 8% undecided) despite a Dem turnout that approximates that of 2008 (Obama got 55% in the CD in 2008 and 55% of the sample reported having voted for Obama). And the internals are even worse for the Democrats: Turner gets 72% of the vote among those for whom Israel is very important, Turner carries the Jewish vote handily (even as a Catholic running against an Orthodox Jew), and Obama’s approval rating in the district is an abyssmal 31%. We need to keep working hard to help Turner across the finish line, but it looks increasingly as if we’re going to win this race tomorrow. Here’s the poll: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/09/republican-bob-turner-is-poised-to-pull-a-huge-upset-in-the-race-to-replace-anthony-weiner-as-the-congressman-from-new-yorks.html
Fingers crossed.
This is just shocking, far more so than what happened in upstate New York a few months back.
Wow, 31% approval is a titanically crappy # for Obama to have in that distinct!
I wouldn’t have guessed that even the most GOP seat in the state would have him quite that low let alone this one.
Something like a perfect storm going on.
I hope it survives redistricting, I’ve been eager to see us compete in this seat since Bush got 44% in 2004.
The Brooklyn portion of Nadler’s NY-08 right next door is just as conservative (if not more so) than the Brooklyn portion of the NY-09. I’ve been hoping for a heavily Orthodox CD in Brooklyn for years; I hope they draw it this time. Maybe Dov Hikind can switch to the GOP and get elected to Congress (Turner’s heavily Catholic Rockaway home area, on the other hand, would be a perfect fit for the Staten Island/Bensunhurst NY-13, where, BTW Congressman Michael Grimm recently cast a disappointing pro-abortion vote.)
You guys have done us proud!!!
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