, as is your conclusion.
Posted on 02/04/2014 1:12:53 PM PST by Clintonfatigued
PPP's newest Alaska poll finds that Mark Begich continues to lead his potential Republican opponents for reelection by small margins, and that third party candidates could play a spoiler role in helping him win this fall.
Voters are closely divided in their feelings about Begich with 43% approving of the job he's doing to 44% who disapprove. None of his potential Republican opponents have great numbers either though. Mead Treadwell has a 33/31 favorability rating, Dan Sullivan's is 31/35, and Joe Miller is incredibly unpopular with a 16/62 spread.
Begich leads Sullivan 41/37, Treadwell 43/37, and Miller 45/25 in prospective match ups. Third party candidates get anywhere from 7-9% in those match ups, with the Alaskan Independence Party candidate in particular getting a decent amount of support at anywhere from 5-6%. That's splitting the anti-Begich vote and helping him to lead overall, a similar dynamic to what we saw in the Montana Senate race in 2012 when Jon Tester won with less than 50% because the Libertarian candidate pulled so much support.
(Excerpt) Read more at publicpolicypolling.com ...
Democrat pollster Tommy Jensen of PPP had to resort to his entire bag of tricks to claim that Begich is still (barely) ahead.
For one thing, they asked questions about each GOP candidate first, and then asked the racehorse question for each candidate as the nominee, thus pushing supporters of a particular candidate to say that they wouldn’t vote for another Republican in the general (e.g., Treadwell supporters, out of perceived loyalty to Treadwell and in hopes that the poll would show Treadwell as running stronger against Begich than would Sullivan, saying they “don’t know” who they’d vote for if Sullivan was the nominee).
And even worse, they included every unknown third-party candidate imaginable, knowing full well that this early in the process they will get a huge number of false answers for those unknown guys, which has the effect of making a result in the low-to-mid-40s for Begich a “lead.” (PPP *always* releases one-on-one results when it’s basically an R vs. D race, but decided not to here: I bet you that the reason is that, even with Jensen’s thumb on the scale, both Sullivan and Treadwell lead Begich when voters are asked if they’d vote for the D, the R or “someone else” and leave it at that.)
Moreover, the sample had a huge number of minority voters (presumably Native Americans), much higher than what one would see in any AK election, much less a non-presidential one.
In conclusion, this is a *devastating* poll for Begich, although I’m sure that he already was aware that his only chance of winning is if Miller (bless his heart) wins the nomination and manages to blow the general again. Fortunately, it doesn’t appear as if Miller has a chance of winning the GOP primary against two fairly popular, and fairly conservative, Republicans.
BTW, I supported Miller in 2010 (as almost all conservatives who were paying attention did) because he faced the execrable RINO Lisa Murkowski, and would face a third-tier Democrat in the general, but given his implosion in 2010 and the fact that Begich isn’t a pushover I think that it would be foolish to nominate Miller this time—he really should run for a lower office and build a record before trying for the Senate again.
, as is your conclusion.
My analysis of the poll is a little black box with an X in the middle? : )
Try this one.
i was willing to give joe miller another chance, but he hasn t learned anything. miller is appealing to the paultards. i’m leaning toward sullivan even though mitch mcconnell is counting him as an ally. treadwell has too many pro-murcowski fundraisers in his camp. i agree that tom jensen of ppp is a hack. jensen hid unfavorable polling of the colorado recall to protect dems. ppp polls are in the ball park on election eve, but their polls this early are agenda driven. jensen is doing plenty of polling on unemployment benefits, gun control, and minimum wage. jensen is fishing for issues to attack the gop. i wonder jensen pays his interns minimum wage. lol!
larry pressler is a flake. he lost to tim johnson in 1996 even while dole was winning sd. then pressler endorsed obama. i could see why janklow disliked pressler.
Both Pressler and Janklow are/were execrable. Janklow himself cleared the way for his buddy Daschle to get elected Senator (and Daschle served as a “character witness” at Janklow’s vehicular homicide trial).
New American Crossroads poll in AK shows both Sullivan and Treadwell leading Begich by 47%-41%, but shows Begich trouncing Miller by 51%-32%. http://www.politico.com/morningscore/?hp=l6 I’m not sure that I believe that Miller is down by such a large margin (some Republicans may be embarrassed to say that they’d vote for him), but this is further evidence that, whether we like it or not, Joe Miller has not rehabilitated his image from 2010 and is the one GOP nominee who would pretty much guarantee Begich’s reelection.
BTW, American Crossroads also polled AR, LA, MI, MT, NH and NC, and their results (which also can be found in the above link) are mostly good news.
Direct links to the American Crossroads polls (conducted by Harper):
AK: http://images.politico.com/global/2014/02/06/ac_1401_ak_toplines.html
AR: http://images.politico.com/global/2014/02/06/ac_1401_ar_toplines.html
LA: http://images.politico.com/global/2014/02/06/ac_1401_la_toplines.html
MI: http://images.politico.com/global/2014/02/06/ac_1401_mi_toplines.html
MT: http://images.politico.com/global/2014/02/06/ac_1401_mt_toplines.html (and the Dem-primary poll results are here: http://images.politico.com/global/2014/02/06/ac_1401_mt_dem_toplines.html)
NH: http://images.politico.com/global/2014/02/06/ac_1401_nh_toplines.html
NC: http://images.politico.com/global/2014/02/06/ac_1401_nc_toplines.html
american crossroads is karl rove’s organization. crossroads spent millions on rehberg, berg, mandel, and mack with no results.
correction- harper polling co. did the polling.
They paid for the polls, but they didn’t conduct them (Harper did).
Thanks.
Daines looks like he’s in good shape. Or rather the MT democrats look like they are in crappy shape.
The rat primary poll has it a tie between Walsh and ex-RINO Bohlinger with a huge undecided.
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