Where’s why polls are not determinative of electoral outcomes. You knew that Richard Blumenthal misled people repeatedly into believing that he served in Vietnam, and you knew that his opponent Linda McMahon had truckloads of money. Did you not think she’d use that money to flood Connecticut with negative ads highlighting Blumenthal’s lies?
McMahon has her own glaring flaws and Blumenthal still has good odds of winning this race, but the polls taken prior to McMahon’s ad campaign were only meaningful in the sense that they provided some evidence that Blumenthal had a big enough cushion that he might be able to withstand the coming onslaught. There’s a reason that some pundits expected Blumenthal to drop out when the Vietnam revelations hit despite him having a nearly twenty-point advantage in the polls.
We didn’t know that Meg Whitman had an undocumented worker problem, but that revelation has rendered prior polls meaningless, as well. And, as First Read notes, a collapse by Whitman could lead to catastrophe for Carly Fiorina and other downticket Republicans in California, rendering their poll numbers meaningless.
There’s a limit to how much television advertising can move poll numbers, but that’s not true about the devastating ad. It’s very difficult to create a devastating ad without some underlying facts that are devastating. But that’s where the Democrats have good news. As I detailed in my Republican House of Horrors piece, the Republicans have fielded a slate of rogues and scoundrels and rank hypocrites who are unusually vulnerable to the devastating advertisement.
Does anyone think that polls of the George Allen-Jim Webb race were meaningful in the week after the ‘Macaca’ moment but before the people of Virginia had been deluged with that footage?
You have to consider that even the Republicans in Washington considered half of these candidates to be unacceptable. They are only reluctantly supporting Ken Buck and Joe Miller and Christine O’Donnell and Rand Paul and Marco Rubio and Sharron Angle. They weren’t their first choices for a reason. All of them are vulnerable to the devastating ad.
I don’t think too many people will be moved by the great revelation that a politician lied – maybe in Mississippi or Alabama that could move the needle, but I don’t see that being as big of a deal in Connecticut. I could be quite wrong, obviously, but that seems to me to be along the lines of: “BREAKING: It’s raining in Seattle!”
Have you seen the collapse of Blumenthal’s poll numbers?
Or how it helped Giannoulias in Illinois.
It’s revealed in June that Mark Kirk has been lying about his military service and it helps Giannoulias pull even.
http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Poll-Voters-Hate-Kirk-Giannoulias-Equally-96394504.html
Giannoulias pulls a little ahead. Kirk has trust issues.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-10-02/news/ct-met-tribune-poll-senate-20101001_1_broadway-ba
nk-republican-mark-kirk-democrat-alexi-giannoulias
Has he lost support or has she gained support, and did the change correspond to the release of the ad? If the timing is synced I can see that and stand corrected, but it still seems kind of silly (all around) to me.
Look at the graph. Blumenthal has been losing his lead consistently over the whole year, largely because of this issue. But we’ll have to see whether he can weather this ad, which just started running.
Another week’s data will certainly be useful, but looking at the graph and assuming the ad began in the last week of September (or did it begin in the first wee of October?) it looks like there was a brief five-point swing that quickly swung back. Let’s see what it looks like a week from now.
According to the polls over at DKos, there’s nothing that qualifies as “collapse” going on so far. You seem to be slipping into all-out hysteria, Boo. Steroid Bimbo has hit her ceiling, and it’s hard to see the “devastating ad” depressing Dem turnout, which is what will determine the outcome.
What’s a good attack ad for blumenthal?
Steroids in WWE?
Parody of WWE trash-talk about McMahon’s positions?
I have no sense of what would work in Connecticut.
Linda McMahon. Dead wrestlers.
She turned a blind eye. Drugs. Dead wrestlers. Unsafe conditions. Dead wrestlers. Linda McMahon looked the other way.
Dead wrestlers. Linda McMahon.
Linda McMahon. Dead wrestlers.
Hmmm, I’m not so sure I agree with you on this. The Macaca thing happened in August, and the polls didn’t start to reverse until late October. It can pull last minute support, I suppose, but the most important part of this race is getting people out there voting for our candidates. GOTV is the race, it’s always been the race, it always will be the race.
If anything was devastating, it was Blumenthal’s smackdown in the debate the other day:
that’s hilarious.
There ya go. The ad made itself.
I heard about that one, but hadn’t seen it yet. Thanks.
That graph is missing the new polls from 3/4 http://www.politico.com/morningscore/ that show Blumenthal’s margin widening back out to 15% after the debate. Doesn’t necessarily mean the ad won’t be a killer, but it does undercut the general trend lines.
Also, speaking of the enthusiasm gap, check this out:
Seems to be that it’s not depressed Democrats, but overwhelming excitement among Republicans. That’s not exactly the narrative that Kos and FDL and AmericaBLOG would have us believe, though…