polls

SUSA: Smith's Approval Ratio Plummets by: torridjoe Thu Sep 04, 2008 at 08:00:00 AM PDT Not much else available but the numbers, not even at KATU, but they speak for themselves: Do you approve or disapprove of the job Gordon Smith is doing as United States Senator? Approve 38% Disapprove 56% Not Sure 6% No one has a better handle on Senate approval than Survey USA. They do it monthly, although strangely they semed to have taken this summer off, not reporting in June or July (these calls were done in mid-August). And in over three years of (mostly) monthly polling, Smith has never been anywhere NEAR this low. As you can see from the tracking graph, it goes all the way back to May of 2005, and the next-worst rating is 45% approval, recorded with the last prior sample, May of this year. Smith has flirted with the mid 40s before, but for the most part it has hovered in the low 50s, with dips right at 50%.  So this is a five month sagging of Smith's approvals, from 50-40 (+10) in April, to the first-ever negative approval at -2 (45-47), following three months later by this whopping -18 ratio, a stunning twenty-eight point drop in four months, over three surveys. Perhaps this poll is noise, and there's further slackening from May's narrow deficit but not THAT much, or maybe it's even crawled back to the positive. But if it's not noise--if September's ratio shows a negative even in the high single digits, then he's definitely taken a major hit over the summer. Why? {more} There's More... :: (2 Comments, 710 words in story)

M49 Polls Well, M50 Closer by: James X. Fri Aug 17, 2007 at 14:54:37 PM PDT Riley Research, via PBJ, via HinesSight: "[Measure 49] looks to be a pretty effective measure that's popular with voters," Riley said. "(Measure opponent) Oregonians in Action stands to lose if they don't mount an aggressive campaign to change the impression about what the ballot measure will entail." Measure 50, which would levy an 84.5-cent-per-pack tobacco tax, then steer the extra money toward children's health care, is harder to call, he said. "Voters seem to favor it, but not as much as the Measure 37 fix," he said. "It's not as popular as one might expect." Discuss :: (0 Comments)

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