Every move Jane Norton makes looks desperate

by Donald E. L. Johnson | 3:08 pm, June 23, 2010

Jane Norton appears to be losing to Ken Buck in their race for the GOP’s nomination to the U.S. Senate.
And she obviously has known that for some time, because every move she’s made over the last month has looked desperate.
Even before Louisville, CO-based Magellan Data Mapping Strategies released a poll showing Buck was leading Norton by 10 points, she was running TV commercials that promised the impossible—the repeal of ObamaCare and victory in Afghanistan. Then she put up the ugliest home page I’ve seen in a long time promoting her promise to win in Afghanistan. Her campaign needs an editor.
Now, after having her campaign manager, Josh Penry, scoff at the Magellan poll, which has been more than confirmed by a SurveyUSA poll for the Denver Post and Channel 9, Norton has released an unbelievable poll of 400 Coloradans that shows she’s leading Buck by six points, give or take about five points.
Why is Norton in trouble? She seems to be using poll results to fine tune her message. Karl Rove says candidates who hold up their fingers and follow the latest polls instead of talking about what they want to do and about their values lose. That seems to be Norton’s problem. While she’s as smart and conservative as Buck, she’s coming across to voters as less committed and more shallow than he is. She’s being out campaigned, and she’s losing the personality contest—so far.
If Norton wins the primary, she’ll be the miracle candidate of the year. Norton may be the candidate of the GOP establishment, but Buck obviously is the candidate of the conservative establishment.
LINKS:
Poll: Buck, Bennet lead in U.S. Senate primary races. By Michael Booth.
Why is Ken Buck leading Jane Norton by 10 points? The Business Word, 6.11.2010.
Jane Norton for Colorado.
Buck for Colorado.

Why does Scott McInnis have a 28-point lead over Dan Maes?

by Donald E. L. Johnson | 6:57 pm, June 21, 2010

Why does former U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis have a 28-point lead over Dan Maes for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, according to  a SurveyUSA poll published in the Denver Post? Does that mean he’ll be the GOP nominee in the fall? With the nomination virtually locked up, will he have more money to take on Obama Democrat Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper? Is McInnis just plain lucky, or what? Can you believe the results of the poll, which was done by the third most accurate political poster, according to fellow RMA blogger, Ben DeGrow?
McInnis leads Maes 57% to 29% with 14% undecided according to a SurveyUSA poll of likely Republican primary voters. McInnis leads Hickenlooper 47% to 43%, which means they’re in a virtual tie. 
Why is McInnis leading? Among other things, long before SurveyUSA said jobs is the top priority for Colorado’s voters, McInnis has been saying “jobs, jobs, jobs” is the top issue since I started covering his campaign back in early October. See link below.
This is my 191st post about Scott McInnis, my 100th about Dan Maes and my 51st about John Hickenlooper.
LINKS:
Is Dan Maes Toast? Raised only $35,000 in May; Scott McInnis raised $252,000. The Business Word, 6.04.2010.
Poll: Coloradans say jobs are nation’s primary concern. SurveyUSA in Denver Post, 6.21.2010.
Poll: Hickenlooper has fight ahead with either Maes or McInnis in gubernatorial race. SuveyUSA in Denver Post, 6.20.2010.
Numbers don’t back Norton camp’s attempt to disparage SurvayUSA. By Ben DeGrow.
Scott McInnis attacks Ritter’s inexperience, bad bets. The Business Word, 10.05.2009.

Ken Buck 53%, Jane Norton 37%; Michael Bennet 53%, Andrew Romanoff 36%

by Donald E. L. Johnson | 8:12 am, June 20, 2010

A new Denver Post poll shows that Ken Buck leads Jane Norton in their race for the GOP’s U.S. Senate nomination, 53% to 37%. Michael Bennet leads Andrew Romanoff in their race for the Democrats’ nomination, 53% to 36%. The primary elections are Aug. 10, and voters will start mailing in their ballots by about July 20.
Buck leads Bennet 46% to 43%. This shows the anti-Obama Democrat sentiment has held steady all year, but the race is still close. Bennet has raised millions for his campaign while Buck has raised only several hundred thousand dollars. Buck’s weak fundraising has been offset by more than a million dollars of advertising funded by political action committees (PACs) and 527 groups financed by unnamed contributors.
With Buck and Bennet in a virtual tie, the race will depend on whether voters remain unhappy with Obama Democrats and whether Buck can match Bennet’s strong fundraising. Political consultants say that if candidates don’t have the money they need for a general election by July, they will have a tough time beating a candidate with as much money on hand as Bennet has. 
However, this is 2010, and both Buck and Bennet are relatively unknown to voters. All Buck has to do is attract enough funding to be competitive in what looks like a strong GOP year, and he has a chance to beat the appointed Obama Democrat Bennet.
This is the second credible poll that shows Buck leading Norton and the first one that shows Bennet with such a big lead over the underfunded Romanoff.
At what point will Republicans unite behind Buck and Democrats behind Bennet? After the primary or now? Wishful thinkers will wait until after the primaries. Political pros will start shifting their allegiances and support now. Both Buck and Bennet seem to have insurmountable leads. There are no signs that either Norton or Romanoff are attracting the strong, passionate support that they will need to pull off victories in August.
LINKs:
Poll: Buck, Bennet lead in U.S. Senate primary races. By Michael Booth.
Why is Ken Buck leading Jane Norton by 10 points? The Business Word, 6.11.2010.

What does strength of Tea Party mean for Ken Buck, Jane Norton, Dan Maes, Scott McInnis?

by Donald E. L. Johnson | 4:31 pm, June 18, 2010

A Rasmussen Reports video that reports that a third of Coloradans identify with the Tea Party is getting attention on Colorado’s blogs, and that brings up the question, how will the TP strength affect the primary campaigns of Jane Norton, Ken Buck, Dan Maes and Scott McInnis?
Start with some assumptions based on Tea Party behavior to date.

The Tea Party is not monolithic in the beliefs of its non-dues-paying “members.”
Tea Party people think for themselves, and they have to, because there really is no party, just a powerful movement.
Ken Buck, Dan Maes, Jane Norton and Scott McInnis are all appealing to the values that they think are most important to Tea Party folks. 
All of the GOP candidates are not only saying things TP folks like, but they’re also all saying things that make TP folks cringe.
TP folks may or may not vote in the primaries. Many didn’t bother to attend the GOP caucuses, and few contribute to the campaigns of their supposed favorites—Ken Buck and Dan Maes.
Some, if not many, TP folks will decide that all of the Republicans have gotten the messages that are important to them. If they come to that conclusion, they may vote for the candidates that are most likely to win and govern as both Republicans and members of the Tea Party.
The poll probably doesn’t mean much because it doesn’t show what Tea Party members want from their politicians.

Rasmussen’s poll found that Colorado has the greatest share of voters who identify with the Tea Party. Just how many Tea Parties are in Colorado?

Scott McInnis 46%, John Hickenlooper 41%; Dan Maes 41%, Hickenlooper 41%

by Donald E. L. Johnson | 9:54 am, June 17, 2010

Without doing much if any advertising, Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis leads his Democrat opponent, John Hickenlooper, 46% to 41%, according to Rasmussen Reports. Republican Dan Maes also hasn’t done any advertising and doesn’t have the money to compete with McInnis or Hickenlooper, and he is tied with Hickenlooper at 41% each.
Among the critical unaffiliated voters who will decide the election, both Republicans are tied with Hickenlooper who probably will have a big money advantage over the GOP nominee but will be swimming upstream against the anti-Obama Democrat tide. Polling the Republicans versus Hickenlooper is meaningless at this point, because the GOP candidate is yet to be decided, and Hickenlooper won’t start pouring money into advertising until after Labor Day.
In addition to his money advantage over the Republicans, Hickenlooper has a big advantage in the favorability readings, which Rasmussen calls more important than the headline polling results. Hickenlooper is viewed very favorably by 26% of voters and very unfavorably by only 18%. That his favorable and unfavorable numbers are higher than the Republicans’ suggests that his name recognition is higher even though McInnis beats him in the headline numbers. McInnis polls 16% very favorable and 14% very unfavorable. People don’t know Maes and only 9% have very favorable opinions of him and 8% have very unfavorable opinions of him.
With a +/- 4.5% percentage points margin of sample error at a 95% level of confidence, the latest polls seems to show that the Republicans are tied with Hickenlooper and that it doesn’t mean much for the GOP primary, which I expect McInnis to win pretty easily.
Over the last few weeks, McInnis has been making headlines and issuing press releases while Maes has been relatively invisible. That McInnis isn’t spending a lot of money on advertising yet suggests that he thinks he has the upper hand in the campaign. Voters will get their ballots on July 20 and 21, and some 60% to 65% will vote by mail and absentee ballots before the Aug. 10 primary.
Therefore, if either McInnis or Maes is going to wage an ad campaign, it should start pretty soon.
I think that if McInnis is the GOP nominee, Hickenlooper’s superior resources and campaigning skills might let him win 51% to 49%. McInnis is his own campaign manager, strategist and tactician, and that could kill his chances. And the more McInnis has to spend on his primary campaign against Maes, the weaker he’ll be in the general election campaign.
If Maes is the GOP candidate, I think Hickenlooper will get 55% to 60% of the votes. Maes would be this year’s Rollie Heath who in 2002 lost to incumbent Republican Govenor Bill Owns 63% to 34%.
 
 
 

Why is Ken Buck leading Jane Norton by 10 points?

by Donald E. L. Johnson | 6:36 am, June 11, 2010

Why is Ken Buck leading Jane Norton by 10 percentage points, 42% to 32%, in the Magellan Data Mapping Strategies poll that was released yesterday?
Even though Magellan works for Buck, the poll was conducted independent of his campaign and looks credible.
It has to be a shocking wakeup call for the establishment Republicans who are 

Ken Buck 42%, Jane Norton 32% in survey of likely Republican primary voters

by Donald E. L. Johnson | 4:45 pm, June 10, 2010

Politicians love to publish internal polls that show they’re leading, and their opponents always warn that such polls should be considered unreliable and biased.
And that is the response to 

Ken Buck 46%, Michael Bennet 41%; Jane Norton 46%, Bennet 40%

by Donald E. L. Johnson | 9:47 am, June 9, 2010

Jane Norton has a slightly bigger lead over Obama Democrat Sen. Michael Bennet, 46% to 40%, than Ken Buck’s 46% to 41%, but Rasmussen Reports says Buck is looking stronger against Bennet and his Democrat primary challenger, Andrew Romanoff, than Norton is.
Romanoff looks stronger against the Republicans than Bennet does.
Norton leads Romanoff 43% to 42%, and Buck leads him 45% to 39%. Norton and Buck are in a tight race for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, and Bennet and Romanoff are running for the Democrats’ nomination.
But more important than the headline numbers, according to Rasmussen, is how strongly voters feel about the candidates. This shown in the poll results when voters are asked whether they have very favorable or unfavorable feelings about the candidates.
Their very favorable and very unfavorable ratings are:
Buck, 13% to 16%
Norton, 15% to 24%
Bennet, 18% to 32%
Romanoff, 20% to 21%.
Buck has the lowest very unfavorable ratings of the four candidates at 16%, and Bennet, the pro-ObamaCare, pro-stimulus, pro-union, pro-tax increase and anti-energy independence candidate, has the highest unfavorably ratings of 32%. But Buck also has the lowest “very favorable” ratings of 13% vs. Romanoff’s 20%.
ObamaCare is unpopular in Colorado where 56% of the likely voters surveyed favor its repeal, and 39% oppose; 51% strongly favor repeal and 29% strongly oppose repeal, according to Rasmussen. The unpopular bill never will be fully repealed but court actions may kill its hated mandates that everyone buy insurance or be fined, and Congress will change the bill over time, especially if Republicans regain control of Congress, which seems unlikely at this point.
Romanoff and the White House have disclosed that Obama tried to get Romanoff to drop out of the Senate race and clear the field for Bennet. Rasmussen’s poll found that 72% of the likely voters in Colorado have been following the story. Half of them said that it is “at least somewhat important to how they vote this year.”
Speculators at Intrade are giving Republicans a 47.7% (bid price) chance of retaking the House in November. Traders are giving Democrats a 72.1% chance of holding the Senate and Republicans a 12.6% chance of taking control of the Senate. They are giving Democrat Sen. Majority Leader, Harry Reid (D-NV), a 49.9% chance of holding his seat. And they are giving Barbara Boxer (D-CA) 69.9% chance of holding her seat. The political futures markets are considered better indicators of the current political situation than public opinion polls, but that is true only when the markets are fairly active and liquid.
 

Speculators cut bets that GOP will take over U.S. House

by Donald E. L. Johnson | 5:59 pm, May 22, 2010

Speculators at Intrade.com are giving Republicans a 39.4% chance of retaking the U.S. House of Representatives this fall, down from over 50% on a few days ago. They’re giving the GOP a 15% chance of taking over the U.S. Senate, up a bit from a few days ago.

Look for new polls that include Dan Maes, Andrew Romanoff

by Donald E. L. Johnson | 5:46 pm, May 22, 2010

Polls matching Scott McInnis against John Hickenlopper and Jane Norton and Ken Buck against Michael Bennet are obsolete.
The results of delegates’ votes at the Republicans’ and Democrats’ state assemblies Saturday gave a small victory to GOP gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes over Scott McInnis (49.4%-48.9%) and a big one to Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff over Bennet (60.4%-39.6%).
This means Rasmussen Reports, an independent polling organization, and Public Policy Polling, which works for Democrats, need to rerun their polls that pit both Scott McInnis and Dan Maes against Democrat John Hickenlooper and both Bennet and Romanoff against Ken Buck, Jane Norton and Tom Wiens.

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