It’s not the very best time to take polls seriously, considering how startlingly wrong pollsters got the Virginia House race. Even the group which released the most recent public poll on the U.S. Senate primary in Alaska, got it wrong in Virginia. That said, the Daily Caller/Vox Populi poll didn’t get it as wrong as some other groups did, one of which had House Majority Leader Eric Cantor up more than 30 points. And it did sound the alarm a few days before the primary, saying that Cantor was “struggling.”
In any case, a poll is just a slice of what people are feeling at a particular point and time, and right now the electorate is still largely undecided, as one would expect.
According to the Daily Caller/Vox Populi poll conducted June 5-9, a whopping 31 percent of the Alaskan electorate either didn’t know which candidate they would vote for in the Republican Senate primary, or were going to vote for someone other than Joe Miller, Mead Treadwell, or former DNR Commissioner Dan Sullivan.
I don’t have the poll itself, so I don’t know what the makeup of it was. But the story accompanying it said that out of 619 surveyed, 32 percent said that if the election were held today, they’d vote for Sullivan. In this poll at least, he’s beating Treadwell by 9 points and Miller by 17 points.
The numbers to pay close attention to: Among voters who consider themselves “very conservative,” 41 percent support Sullivan, 25 percent support Miller, and 21 percent support Treadwell. These are the voters most likely to actually vote.
According to the poll, Sullivan has a lower favorability rating than does Treadwell. Forty-one percent of Alaska Republicans rated Sullivan favorably while 28 percent had an unfavorable view of him. Forty four percent of those polled had a favorable view of Treadwell while only 16 percent viewed him unfavorably. Likely some of this has to do with the negative ads Begich and his super-PAC have released about Sullivan. They’ve largely left Treadwell alone.
The poll showed that GOP voters have a generally negative view of Miller. Twenty-four percent held a favorable opinion of him while 52 percent had a negative view of him.
A recent poll by Anchorage-based Dittman Research surveyed 500 likely GOP primary voters May 27 – 29. It showed Mead Treadwell with 35 percent of the vote, Dan Sullivan with 37 percent, and Joe Miller with 12 percent. The margin of error was 4.4 percent.
Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com
TP, you are WRONG. I was at election central with Dave on election night, and he called the final numbers for Miller Murkowski spot on. Sick and tired of the Dittman bashing….
The people I know who were strong Joe Miller supporters exactly 4 years ago today are now Afghan Dan supporters. Gun rights and the current mess the United States is in seem to be prevailing issues.
Senator Begich signed on with Bloomberg back when he was Anchorage mayor, and now he is reported to have hired Brady patron Celinda Lake as a campaign manager and pollster. That scares the gun crowd. And it should.
Joe Miller scared everyone in 2010. He was just too full of himself and lacked the experience to know what to do once he won the primary. He seems unlikely to be able to beat Begich.
Mead Treadwell has only just now become a conservative. He is a one-worlder who believed in global warming until just the other day. He would be better for Alaska than Begich has been, especially in the final years of the Obama presidency, but he likely cannot beat Begich. In any event, Sullivan would be a better senator. We need someone who will stand up to Reid and Obama.
Does not compute. Does not compute. The Christian Soldiers will advance Joe Miller. The polls be damned.
P.S. – Dittman had the Murkowski – Miller race wrong too.
My money is on Joe Miller. Remember, the polls didn’t show him beating Lisa either.
We all know that only one poll counts and that’s the one taken election day. However, polls if done correctly are representative of the moment in time that they were taken. That said, I agree that the CONSERVATIVE number is a leading indicator of what you might see on August 19th. A betting person would expect the general election to be between Sullivan and Begich. A third party candidate could well be the deciding force. Right now Begich is benefitting from the fact that Sullivan has GOP challengers. These GOP challengers are actually helping Begich’s chances of winning in November sustantially. Additionally, I have problems with the quality and integrity of the Dittman poll as well because it does not comport with other polls or existing conventional wisdom. May the polling Gods be with us.
Your analysis is correct in terms of the prmary number to watch is the vote among conservatives. These voters are the base of the party and are among the most committed voters. The base turns out in a larger percentage. This number showa the race leaning strongly towards Sullivan, followed by Miller with Treadwell coming in a distant third. I would be willing to predict that this order of finish will probably stand; however, the margins will continue to change. I noticed that you included the Dittman poll results, presumeably because it was the last ppoll you were aware of. I have a few comments and observations about this poll: 1) Dittman sold the firm. He is no longer affiliated or works at the firm; 2) the new owner has little professional or practical experience and is trading off of Dittman’s name and the brand he developed; 3) some of the results of this poll are laughable and makes me question the integrity of the polling instrument, the methodology and reliability of the pollster’s integrity; 4) KTVA-Channel 11 reported that this firm was negotiating to do work with the Treadwell campaign at the time these numbers were released. For these reasons and more, it makes me wonder why you you would even include them in your blog or with this story. Anyone who knows anything about polling can quicly see the impracticality of the results.