••• Is the Alaska US Senate race approaching a 3-way tie??? And what does that portend? •••

[breadandwine]

http://community.adn.com/adn/node/153691


Two polls out that some may question have the Alaska race for Senator nearly a 3 - way tie. Rasmussen telephone poll of 500 likely voters has it Miller-Murkowski-McAdams at 35-34-27 percent respectively.

Since Rasmussen has been accused of being pro-Republican this could mean a number of things and might depend on who they prefer, Miller or Murkowski.

(Miller is the Tea Party GOP nominee, Murkowski is the Republican US Senator who lost the primary but is continuing to run as a write in, and McAdams is the Democrat.)

A second poll by the unabashedly right wing, pro-corporate and anti-tax Club for Growth has it 33-31-27 precent respectively in the same order among likely voters.

If Miller is that low, at only a third of the vote, then McAdams at 27 is getting close.

All such polls, though, at a bare minimum use polling methodological biases that favor their ideology, like under polling people with cell phones which underpolls young people or things like that.

So where the race really is is hard to judge.

McAdams has an ad gently saying that both his Republican opponents want to outsource Alaska jobs to China. Another focuses on Miller and attacks him directly and more bluntly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0StdA6Jtlhk&feature=player_embedded

But at least one McAdams ad seems to suggest that he is hoping to capitalize on the two Republicans quarreling between each other while he stays maybe a little more positive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrdqxMOiwzs&feature=player_embedded

But these ads seem to lack a unifying theme. It was hard to really get a sense of the race from a strategic perspective until I saw this independent Tea Party ad posted by the PAC that created it, on october 4, savaging Murkowski in favor of Miller:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OqMJ3aQC0c

Historically negative campaigning works. It cuts down the opponent more than it hurts you. If Miller's official campaign had run this ad it might have helped him with the public having nowhere to turn but the two of them, but it is a 3-way race, not 2. So voters alienated from this negativity might switch from both of them to McAdams, especially because of his relative nice-guy laid-back image.

But the real question for me is where do voters turn in a STRATEGIC way? Do they come to realize that Murkowski as a write-in candidate is a risk? If they don't, they vote for Murkowski to stop Miller, and that hurts McAdams, with quite a few Democrats already reportedly defecting from McAdams to vote Murkowski to stop Miller. Or voters could decide that Murkowski can't win and defect back to McAdams as the only way to stop Miller. A lot depends on the momentum AS IT IS BEING PORTRAYED IN ALASKA MEDIA and I am not in Alaska to sense that. Or it could be that as the race tightens between Miller and Murkowski all the media attention will be on the tight race (there is clearly some of that in media reports) and the pressure will be on Miller-haters to abandon McAdams in favor of stopping Miller by voting Murkowski. And part of the problem is that it is hard to tell voters that a write-in vote is wasted when the polls are this close, even though a lot of voters get to the polls and don't even know how to cast a write-in or wait till they are in the voting booth and then discover that Murkowski is not on the ballot. Yes, this is Alaska, the state that made Paloin governor and yes, they could be that stupid. But you can't TELL them they are stupid so it is hard to convince them to abandon a write-in campaign.

So the trouble is that as long as the media sees a tight race between the two Republicans it may take the oxygen out of the McAdams campaign. And if Murkowski pulls ahead, which may well happen, voters may be comfortable reelecting her and relieved that Miller is losing. None of this looks good for McAdams and he may have to go more negative to win. If he does, an obvious question is who does he attack? If he savages Miller he may simply be paying for the election of Murkowski since a fear of Miller may make many voters simply swithc to Murkowski. And if he attacks Murkowski, he could be merely aiding Miller as long as McAdams remains in 3rd place.

So none of this is really as encouraging as I would like to see.

Anybody know more about how the race is shaping up there? Who has more info?

[Mister Ed]

1. Rasmussen tends to skew to the right by 7 to 10 percent.

The reason is their methodology. The poll goes out to land lines only (no cell phones), and is conducted via recording rather than live interview. Since most young voters these days eschew land lines in favor of cell phones, they're left out of the poll. The Rasmussen poll over-samples older voters and thus skews to the right - whether by design or not, I can't say.

If the Democratic candidate in Alaska is doing this well in the Rasmussen poll, and in the poll conducted by the right-wing Club for Growth, then this may have become a winnable race for the Dems.

[BzaDem]

2. The problem is that McAdams cant seem to reach 33%, which he needs at the VERY least in order to win

If Miller and Murkowski aren't tied, then he needs even more than 33%. If he hits 33% or more, then he has a chance of winning (depending on how the other two split the remainder).

[Motown_Johnny]

3. if he gets 33 % he loses... someone else will have at least 34% if that happens

This is another race where the (D) doesn't seem to have a reasonable chance of winning.

The best we can hope for is that the tea bagger doesn't win either.

[breadandwine]

4. Well, if there is no big chance the Democrat wins, maybe it is better for the nut to win

since he will embarrass the GOP over the next 2 years, 6 actually.


But what a wretched thing to wish for.


The real question for me is what would be McAdams' strategy?

[BzaDem]

5. By 33%, I meant greater than 33.333333%.

But I would agree that he probably isn't going to win unless he somehow peels off Murkowski voters.

[breadandwine]

6. But I don't see a strategy that would enable him to do that.

....