Sunday, September 24th, 2006...10:51 am
More Polling Numbers
Conservative bloggers have been gloating about the new poll reported in the Arizona Daily Star this morning that shows that Gabrielle Giffords is now leading by “only” twelve points. They are noting that this is a drop from the nineteen points that she was leading by in an internal poll released by the Giffords campaign last week.
I was given some grief for not writing about it. I love it when I get grief for not writing about certain things, like there’s some sort of fatwa that says I can only write about CD 8 or something.
I didn’t avoid writing about the poll because I am disappointed in the results (I’m not), but more because I am having a great deal of trouble wrapping my head around the Republican spin on this one:
- The Greenberg poll showing her 19 points ahead can be disregarded, since they are a Democratic firm employed by the Giffords campaign.
- Anything Carol Zimmerman says can be disregarded because she has been active in Democratic politics for years.
- Oh, the drop in numbers between these two bogus polls needs to be taken as Gospel truth and shows that Randy Graf is set to win this race against the out-of-touch trotskyite amnesty queen Giffords (I’m channelling them here).
An interesting number that they are not writing about is that the Greenberg poll showed Graf at 35% and the Zimmerman poll shows Graf at 35.7%. The Greenberg poll memo didn’t give numbers to three significant figures, but it would be hard to say that people are moving over to Graf in droves.
Another number that some Graf supporters are pointing to is that 45.8% chose immigration as the number one issue. They are making a mistake if they think that this means that 45.8% agree with Graf’s position on the issue. I could walk into Centro Digna on South Sixth and I would find that 100% believe that immigration is the number one issue, but I would also find zero people who support Graf’s position on the issue. A silly example, maybe, but you see my point. I have talked to many voters who are very concerned about the issue, who aren’t necesarilly for “amnesty,” but who are turned off by what they consider Graf’s extreme rhetoric on the issue.
We’ll see if this represents any sort of true movement away from Giffords, or merely a normalizing of the numbers after she had gotten good press after her primary victory. Some of the other numbers in both polls, such as the numbers of Republicans planning on voting for Giffords, Graf’s poor numbers in the rural areas, and Graf’s relatively high disapproval ratings, show that Graf doesn’t have an awful lot of room to move up.
4 Comments
September 24th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
You pretty much sum it up neatly … Graf’s numbers between the two polls don’t change, and they don’t give much reason for thinking they are going to.
September 24th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
WOW, Tedski. People give you grief for NOT writing about something?
Sounds like you’ve become important, you know, responsibility and stuff like that.
Us smaller bloggers are watching Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.
September 24th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Fatwa, that was funny.
I hear there is a poll coming out in the Tucson Weekly this or next week. Of course if it shows Randy doing better than within 13% I guess it won’t count because it is a Republican pollster.
September 24th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Early polls mean very little…just ask Patty Weiss!
Name ID coming out of the primary is affecting these numbers. Graf got beaten up daily by Huffman on the tube and didn’t win the convincing victory Gabby did. Gabby was getting some negatives thrown at her by Patty, too, but Patty didn’t have the money to mount a wholesale effort a la Huffman.
If Republicans start to grudgingly return to Graf because they fear the loss of the House, these numbers will tighten. I also think that polls don’t adequately measure Graf’s support in border areas and (yes, I’ll say it again!) the LD26 conservative uprising that took out Toni Hellon scares me!
Giffords is running a smart campaign on the ground and is sounding the themes that will get the independents to break to her, especially when she goes after the blundering, corrupt Republican leadership in Washington. She’ll need them and she’ll also have to hope that a goodly number of Republicans view Graf the way they did Matt Salmon in the 2002 gubernatorial race.
I hope to hear her start painting a vivid picture of what “Randy Graf’s Arizona” would look like and let that stark reality sink in for those who care about public education, environmental protection, sound fiscal policy and true health care reform! Gabby should be doing that NOW before Randy’s numbers being to creep up…because they will!
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