| Well, a few things can be taken from this polling. First of all, Novick is in to win if he's paying for polling research, especially if he's testing other candidates and experimenting with the public response to potential lines of attack against Smith--which the presence of "informed" head to head matchups suggests. (In political polling, "informing" the respondent means telling them something about the candidates other than just their title. Often, they are less than positive things in order to test out whether bringing them up hurts the candidate they're targeting.)
The Smith "definitely will re-elect" figure at 32% confirms what DSCC got using Lisa Grove's polling outfit--and it's by far the most dangerous number out there for the incumbent, who in a typical challenge race might be in the mid-40s for re-elect. Also note the high percentage still on the fence; these are who Novick will target.
The one thing neither the DSCC nor Novick's team probably wanted to put out there was Smith's 59/25 favorability rating. The national committee duly reported on his 37% job approval rating, but it's clear that many people still think Gordon's a nice guy, even if they don't like the job he's doing.
None of the other challengers named have enough name recognition to make their favorability scores mean much, but the name ID itself is notable--among all potential challengers, Novick is the best well known. All are roughly in the same general headpsace, but it may surprise some that the Speaker of the House in Oregon is less well known than Novick, a talk show host, and a grocery store owner.
Finally, as an indication of just where sentiment is for the President, he hovers dangerously close to sub-20% levels, a figure that amply demonstrates the amount of antipathy Oregonians have for our erstwhile leader.
So let's summarize:
1) Gordon is vulnerable, although personally people still like him
2) Novick is every bit the able challenger that Merkley or the others is, comparing favorably to all of them as an opponent for Smith
3) While both polls were commissioned by partisan players, their concordance suggests reliability if not predictive accuracy, and to the extent that conclusions can be made, they appear to be solid ones.
Update, 11:45 AM--
The Hill has a story on it as well, hat tip to Jon Singer at MyDD. They headline the piece with something the Hotline didn't have--a 50-27 margin for Smith against Novick, before the "informing." I'm hearing that Merkley's initial head to head numbers were very similar with respect to Smith and Novick, so much so as to be equivalent. An incumbent at 50% to start against named candidates with less than 50% name recognition is a prescription for trouble. |
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