The Battle for America 2010: Shock Poll Has GOP Candidate Up 9 in NY-20
New York political junkies woke up this morning to a stunning new poll from Siena Research Institute. The poll conducted on NY’s 20th Congressional District shows a massive surge for Republican challenger Chris Gibson, who overcame a 17-point deficit and now leads the race by 9 — a 26-point swing in only a month.
The dramatic shift in the race did not go unnoticed. Maggie Haberman at Politico wrote that the poll “surprised” even “veteran political watchers in the state.” While Chris Gibson is truly an exceptional candidate and his fantastic performance in recent debates has no doubt boosted his polling, reports are now coming out that the large polling swing is the result of a change in Siena’s likely voter methodology. It sounds benign, but it has some real serious implications for how the media and political watchers perceive New York races. The resulting methodology shift might be hinting at a far weaker performance for Democrat incumbents in New York.
According to Siena pollster Steve Greenberg, each week Siena is able to “tighten” their likely voter population through survey questioning as the elections near. New York has a late primary in September, so the nuts and bolts of voter decision making occur in a short amount of time. In NY-20, likely voters have leaned dramatically for Republicans in the last 30 days. Could the same be true for other upstate districts?
Today’s NY-20 poll not only shows a large swing as a result from methodology, but also points to the possibility that Republican polling might have been on the conservative side. Only a week ago, campaign polling had Gibson leading the race by 2. That sort of surge is not unprecedented, although it certainly raises some questions.
Changing methodology. Questionable, but they have to adjust to this massive wave.
It just confirms what I’ve said all along. It will be a complete slaughter. Might even be an extinction event. ;D
I have been going over the polling data for the last few days. There are a load of races that favored Mc’cain and are being ruled a likely dem or better. This maybe an intresting night. I just cant let myself feel good about these polls. At least until the 3rd.
I have been wondering for some time whether the standard polling turn out models were too conservative. The Republicans supposedly lead in the generic polls by the minimum of five points. In 1994 when they kicked serious butt—they were tied with the Democrats!
I am going on record predicting the GOP will capture 90 House seats and 10 U.S. Senate seats. Please feel free to bookmark my attempt at crystal ball gazing. You will have the full right to make fun of me if I am ultimately proven to be too optimistic.
News coverage should NOT be based on polls.
you bet “the big election surprise on November 2 will be NY”, not least because the four NYC (the WSJ has metro news) newspapers have all but ignored the congressional contests, although Newsday is closely covering the four Dems on Long Isand. The 2008 results for McCain were not only totally ignored by the media, but the NYS Elections Board made it impossible to figure out the results by CD (on purpose), though they did report by county.
There may be nine CDs in play, but there are also at least five more, all downstate, where the longtime Dem incumbent is being forced to seriously campaign.
The turnout by geography will be fascinating because Cuomo does not have coattails, and NYC just fired the new head of the NYC Board of Elections for the fiasco on Sept 14. The Dems are using protecting abortion rights as a main theme to drive turnout for statewide contests.
btw, the only downstate CD that the DNC/OFA has been focussed on is CD-1. Not 4 or 9 or 13. could be a big oops, but, at the very least, a wake-up call for 2012.
Focus on fiscal issues, revive the leadership, and NY could turn red (actually NY is already so deep in the red that maybe the GOP needs to change that color designation!)
News coverage should NOT be based on polls.
There are at least five more downstate CDs where the longtime incumbents have to seriously campaign, not that you would know that from the NYC newspapers.
The NY turnout geography is going to be fascinating! Cuomo has no coattails.
K2K – You are absolutely correct. I think on Nov.3, NY is going to be the state the pundits are talking about as some “big surprise.” You are absolutely right about Cuomo as well. The libs are salavating at the thought that Paladino could drag the ticket down, but don’t realize that Cuomo ain’t pulling the ticket up. I’ve talked to a number of true-blood, downstate progressives and there is zero energy behind Cuomo.
Americans take heart! Toronto just voted in a conservativre mayor by a respectable margin. If that can happen in Toronto it can happen anywhere.
Congratulations to Toronto, my birth city!
If lawn signs are any indication here in NY-25, then Buerkle leads by a sizeable margin. Driving around the area, I have noticed that within Syracuse she and Maffei have roughly the same number of signs posted in peoples’ yards. Out in the suburbs, I’ve seen maybe one Maffei sign. All the others are for Beurkle.
Maffei may win based on the large number of democrats within the city, but it’s clear that Buerkle’s supporters are way more fired up.
@JMD – according to Jill Terrie at the D&C, the voter enrollment is equally split between Democrat and Republican. Only thing Dan Maffei has working is the power of incumbency.