Thursday, September 21, 2006

Casey Holds His Lead

The latest Keystone Poll, conducted by Terry Madonna and his crew at Franklin and Marshall College is out today. It shows Bob Casey Jr. holding his lead over Rick Santorum in the race for U.S. Senate. The poll shows Casey up by 7 points (45%-38%), with Carl Romanelli, the Green Party candidate getting 5%. Twelve percent of the voters say they are undecided.
Casey has held the lead in all of Madonna's Keystone polls. In fact,
this poll, which was in the field last week, shows a slight improvement
for the Democratic challenger over the August poll: he is up one point,
Santorum is down one point.
Don't pay too much attention to the small change in numbers. It is well within the margin of error, which is plus/minus 4%. The telephone survey included 604 voters, with Madonna & Co. trying to screen for "likely voters."
For Casey, here is the good news: He maintains a lead he has held since the first public polling was done. He is running ahead of Santorum in every area of the state, except Central Pa. Santorum's favorability rating among voters is at 36%, his lowest so far this year in this poll.
FYI: The President's favorability rating also remains below 40%. In this poll, it was 38%, a slight uptick from the August poll, when it was 36%.
For Santorum, here is the good news: his head-to-head numbers have improved since early this year (when the same poll showed him trailing Casey by 11 points). Among voters who identified a favorite, 37% were "soft" -- they told Madonna's people they could change their minds. So, it is possible for Santorum to shake some votes from the Democrat. Also, it is clear that Romanelli's presence on the ballot is hurting Casey.
If I were Rick Santorum, I would worry about two things: My low standing in my home base of western Pennsylvania, where Casey still holds the lead; and the court challenges seeking to remove Romanelli from the ballot, which appear likely to succeed. (See my earlier posting in this Carl Romanelli R.I.P?) If he can't improve those numbers in the west and if Romanelli is ordered off the ballot, he will be in deep doo-doo, to quote George the Elder.

On another front, the Keystone Poll shows Gov. Ed Rendell holding a substantial 18-point lead over Republican Lynn Swann, It is 52% for Rendell, 35% Swann with 14% undecided. This is virtually unchanged since August.

Here are details of the latest Keystone Poll.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

If I were Rick Santorum [I'd shoot myself]I would worry about the state of my soul. For someone so ready to nominate himself for Sainthood, he might consider REALLY taking the moral high ground by supporting the health, education and opportunities for the poor and working poor, instead of stealing from the poor and giving to the TRULY FILTHY RICH.

2:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Check out the poll's marginal frequency report. This month, as opposed to last month, the poll got more Rs than Ds and got more central and NW voters than SE, Phila and Allegheny counties. So the poll actually oversampled what would be considered by most political junkies
to be Santorum's base making the numbers probably even worse than they appear.

3:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Most important: GET OUT AND VOTE!!! And if you are not registered, hurry up and do so. There's still time. This is not the time for good people to do nothing.

5:10 PM  
Blogger Adam said...

The key to the poll is that Santorum has spent, what, $5-8M on advertising so far, the bulk of it unopposed during the summer, and it hasn't moved his favorables at all.

He. Cannot. Win.

5:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

True dat!

7:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What else could Santorum have spent $5-8 million dollars on? Oh, I know, paying the taxpayers back the 78k for the cyber schooling services he filched for his kids.

10:18 AM  

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