Krusty seems to think that Democrats aren’t so giddy now. He points to the release of yesterday’s WSJ/Zogby poll release that shows the race within 2 points as well as others since the Register’s Iowa Poll release on October 15 that shows the race is getting closer and closer.
First of all, to the best of my knowledge, the Culver campaign has never hyped the WSJ/Zogby interactive polls since the campaign began. There are reasons for that, the primary one being the methodology — it is Internet-based and most polling experts don’t recognize the interactive polls as being reliable or entirely representative (they have only been used since the 2004 election) so I’m assuming that after this cycle we’ll have a better understanding of how accurate/reliable they are. One usually assumes that Democrats are quite enthusiastic about Zogby’s polling, since he does lean left, however I am really only a fan of his telephone polling which is pretty reliable.
Beyond the simple doubts about the WSJ/Zogby polling methodology, the fact is that internal polling shows Culver maintaining his 7-point lead, as the Culver Campaign put out in a news release yesterday:
“A new poll from the Global Strategy Group shows Iowa Secretary of State has a solid seven point point lead over Republican Congressman Jim Nussle. Culver leads, 44% to 37%, with just 13% of likely voters undecided.
The poll shows Culver has maintained his 7 point lead from the October 15th Des Moines Register poll.
“Culver has clear momentum and every public poll since the October 15th Des Moines Register poll shows Chet Culver with a lead in this race,” said Culver spokesperson Taylor West.”
Culver is holding onto his lead and will win this race on Tuesday, November 7th. Krusty thinks it is narrowing — it isn’t. Let’s look at some more of the information held in the Global Strategy Group memo about the poll:
- Culver is viewed favorably by 51% of likely voters, and unfavorably by 27%. Nearly as many likely voters have an unfavorable opinion of Nussle (40%) as have a favorable opinion of him (43%).
- Democrats are solidly behind Culver (74%-12%). Nussle leads among Republicans, 70% to 15%.
- Independent voters favor Culver over Nussle, 40% to 28%.
- Democratic voters are more excited about this November’s elections than are other voters. 56% of Democrats say they would rate their interest in the upcoming election at a “10 out of 10,” compared to just just 45% of Republicans.
- Among voters who rate their interest in the upcoming election a 10 out of 10, Culver leads Nussle, 50% to 37%.
The basic facts show Culver with higher favorability than Nussle, lower unfavorability than Nussle, a lock of the base (3/4 of Democrats is a lock), a 12 point lead among independents, and Democrats are excited. Not to mention the fact that if you look at the voters polled in the race who rate the race at a 10 out of 10 (a likely sign that they’ll be voting for sure), Culver has a 13 point lead.
But let’s look at some more of the facts. Yesterday, the Secretary of State’s Office released the numbers on how many people in Iowa are registered to vote.
“A report released today showed 2,077,239 Iowans registered for the midterm election, just seven days away.
They included 624,000 Republicans, 646,000 Democrats and 808,000 registered as no party.
This year’s number of registered voters compares with 1,966,459 who registered to vote in November 2002, the last midterm election.”
Let’s incorporate what the polling has consistently shown. First, Culver has consistently maintained a lead in these past few weeks. That means he’s getting the votes of a large amount of Democrats and most likely a very large number of independents, and I’m sure there are a few token Republicans, like Major Dad who commented yesterday about stem cell research. Secondly, Culver has consistently led among independents, which is usually the folks registered as no party in Iowa. Thus, if Culver can get his excited and motivated base out (which events like the Michael J. Fox rally can do) to vote on election day — which shouldn’t be hard — then he’ll immediately have an advantage with a Democratic voter registration edge and a strong advantage among independents and those registered as no party. Nussle and Republicans across the state are dealing with a base that is not motivated. The Republican party has their 72 hour program. Let’s see how well it works.
Finally, let us look at the Democrats’ GOTV efforts. David Yepsen has now twice lamented the absentee ballot turnout of Democrats in this mid-term race. He wrote in yesterday’s column:
“In Iowa, the much ballyhooed Democratic absentee-ballot program isn’t producing the results it produced in the last mid-term election. Democratic strategists still think they’ll produce 10,000 to 15,000 more absentee votes than Republicans do, but that’s not a comfortable margin heading into Election Day, when Republicans have the superior get-out-the-vote operation.”
The fact, the absentee ballot program has changed dramatically from four years ago. The problem then was that Democrats targeted those reliable Democrats who would go to the polls almost consistently on election day. That means our early targeting program got the most reliable Democrats out early and forced a GOTV strategy that focused on the less-motivated who took more time and resources to get them out and fill out the ballot.
This year, Democrats targeted voters who aren’t as likely to make it to the polls, but who are willing and ready to vote Democrat and need to do it early and get it out of the way. And still, in our absentee ballot effort, we lead in requests and the amounts turned in. So our program has been expanding beyond our base — which we know is excited and ready to get out and vote on November 7th. So our GOTV focus will be on getting all motivated Democrats out to vote and still focusing on those who didn’t get an absentee ballot and need to make it to the polls.
We have the polling edge, the motivation edge, and the GOTV edge. Democrats win on November 7th.
