As last week was closing out, the folks at Tom Corbett’s gubernatorial campaign released word that the state Attorney General “continues to hold big leads over three potential Democratic rivals in this year’s race for governor in Pennsylvania.”
The evidence: a Rasmussen Reports poll showing Corbett up by 20-plus points over Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel, Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, and state Auditor General Jack Wagner. (All three Dems were within a couple points of each other — well within the margin of error. The real loser here is Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty, who Rasmussen didn’t even bother to ask voters about.)
The race is very much in play: 14 percent of voters are undecided, and one-third of voters say they don’t know enough about any of the Dems to have formed an opinion about them. And in any case, Dems will be quick to dismiss Rasmussen’s findings.
The polling firm has long been subject to accusations that it has a pro-GOP bias. (See for yourself here and here — along with a more nuanced list of grievances from Nate Silver.) While not setting store by any particular poll, I actually think the most important dyanmic here is that Rasmussen polls likely voters. As Politico recently noted:
Rasmussen, for his part, explained that his numbers are trending Republican simply because he is screening for only those voters most likely to head to the polls — a pool of respondents, he argues, that just so happens to bend more conservative this election cycle.
Polling all adults — a method used by Gallup, another polling firm that conducts a daily tracking poll of Obama — Rasmussen acknowledged, is “always going to yield a better result for Democrats.”
OK, that’s what you’d expect Rasmussen to say. But what really worries me is not Rasmussen’s defense, but the rejoinder offered by his skeptics:
[C]ritics note that the practice of screening for only those voters regarded as most likely to head to the polls potentially weeds out younger and minority voters — who would be more likely to favor Democrats than Republicans.
As a general rule, I think that’s a legitimate critique — and deciding which voters are “likely” to vote makes it easy to tweak your sample in all kinds of ways. But none of that should come as much consolation to the Democrats running for governor. These are four middle-aged white guys, and I’ve seen little sign that any of them have caught fire with younger or minority voters. (Though Hoeffel might come closest.)
That enthusiasm gap might be the difference-maker come November. It certainly played a role in the recent special election in Massachusetts — only about 15 percent of people under 30 bothered to vote there. (The article linked here relies on Rasmussen polling — duh duh DUHHHH! — but it’s totally consistent with other statistical and anecdotal evidence I’ve seen.)
Oh, and this will be a problem for Arlen Specter on the Senatorial side as well, assuming he survives the primary. I can’t quantify this feeling at all, but everything I see and hear suggests that the GOP is much more motivated to oppose Specter than the Democrats are to support him. That, to me, is the most worrisome trend this year.
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2010.
Don’t make me get all Chris Briem on you… I have to say, Rasmussen might have a point about likely voters. The conventional wisdom (which is what is repeated in the news and by pundits) is that the Obama administration has failed. It had too many goals, it had too few successes, it promised us the recession would be over, it is captive to the banks, yada yada yada. Now, I believe the major failure of the Obama administration is not related specifically to Obama and can be summed up in two words: Harry Reid.
But regardless of the truth of our political situation, many, maybe most voters in general are at least upset and some are quite angry that government is not doing more to help them. To the extent the angry ones are either Republicans or Reagan Democrats or independents who have libertarian tendencies, they are likely going to vote Republican.
We already know that younger people do not vote in anywhere near the percentages older people do. That is probably also true of poor voters, although there are an awful lot of them. Frankly I am not excited about the Governor’s race, either primary or general. But I always welcome a chance to throw away my vote on a more liberal candidate.
I wonder about Specter. He obviously has the name recognition across party lines. People may vote for him just because they recognize him and don’t recognize other names. Back in the seventies, a science teacher from Allderdice threw his name into the ring for a statewide race (I want to say US Senator). In the primary he actually received maybe 13% of the vote despite not having campaigned at all. His name: Robert Casey (obviously not THE …)
A thoughtful post, Ed. I have heard a defense of Harry Reid that I find at least worthy of consideration, though: The guy is working within the constraints of a Senate whose rules have become utterly dysfunctional. How many other parliamentary leaders in the industrialized world have to contend with procedural obstacles like those surrounding filibusters? I have lots of differences with Reid, but if I look around the Senate, I’m not sure I see anyone who makes me think, “THERE’S the guy who could break this logjam!” But I’ll admit that I haven’t given the matter much thought.
On the bright side, if you want to throw away your vote on liberal candidates, you’ve got a chance to do so in two statewide elections this year. That’s about as much as we can hope for these days.