Rasmussen: Casey Lead in Single digits

[Tiggeroshii]

Pennsylvania Senate:

Will Pro-Life Stance Cost Casey?
April 5, 2006--You know an incumbent is in tough shape when it's considered good news that his challenger is just nine points ahead, but that's where Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (R) finds himself seven months before Election 2006.

The latest Rasmussen Reports election poll in the Keystone State shows Democrat Bob Casey leading Santorum 50% to 41%. That's the first time in all six polls we've conducted on this race that Casey's lead has slipped to single digits. It's also the first time Santorum has moved above the 40% mark since last July.
....

After asking survey respondents who they would vote for, we informed them that the National Organization for Women (NOW) is concerned about Casey on the abortion issue and is endorsing another candidate in the primary. We then asked a second time about how each respondent would vote.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2006/State%20Polls/Marc...

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This almost looks like pushpolling. They asked them who they preferred and Casey is trampling Santorum, then they asked them an additional question(If you knew Casey was pro choice and NOW was concerned about his prolife views, would you vote for him?) and the result shifts dramatically. It almost looks like opinion-shopping rather than opinion-gathering...

[Roland99]

1. Rasmussen has been a right-leaning outlier for some time now.

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. Rassmussen is skewing their polls

Tell everyone you know. They are BushCo accomplices. Their role is to shave a point amonth off of Casey's lead and then BushCo will steal the election.

[movonne]

3. Getting ready for the diebold scam...they will have to be close

races in order to pull another election fraud...

[Hippo_Tron]

8. n/t

n/t

[Hippo_Tron]

9. Umm Kerry won Pennsylvania

Ohio is where we are worried about a Diebold scam.

[Sapere aude]

4. I keep telling you folks that you can't run a repub lite and expect

all Dems to vote for them.

Some DUers say that makes them mad but you had better get use to the idea. Some Dems will not be willing to go along with selling out others to win. They will stay home rather than vote against their principles.

Wake the hell up damn it!

[DefenseLawyer]

11. If their "principles" are to help Santorum stay in the Senate

then they are principled idiots. "I may not have even a basic understanding of political reality, but by golly I have principles!"

[Stinky The Clown]

5. "This almost looks like pushpolling"

Sure as hell does, doesn't it.

You're also spot on with this: "It almost looks like opinion-shopping rather than opinion-gathering..." My only disagreement is with your use of the word 'almost'.

[Josh]

6. The thing is though it ceases to be a representative poll -

randomly getting 1007 people and asking them who they'll vote for (and of course weighting the results for party, age, race, all that, as pollsters have to do) is scientific. Adding some information and then taking the poll again isn't - it DOES reflect what would happen if the ENTIRE STATE suddenly had that information, and I'm sure it will get spread to some people because they will be told by this poll and the people who took it, but unless the entire state knew that before the poll was taken, the results would not be accurate.

[Josh]

7. Although I just read the poll data -

and it turns out that 9 points is the lead Casey has BEFORE they mention the NOW stuff. After that Santorum leads 46-41. But like some people said, that technique does reek of push-polling; not sure how representative it is.

Still it bothers me that Casey's lead continues to slip, although 9 points ahead of an incumbent is fantastic. Hopefully he can get back above 50% soon.

[rockymountaindem]

10. That's an odd way to conduct a poll.

Nonetheless, I really hope Democrats will put their differences on abortion aside, if only because Santorum is such a jerk and whatever he does will be way worse than Casey. I think we're all counting on Pennsylvania to put a stop to all that "Santorum for President" talk. Ugh.