Mike Castle trailing Christine O'Donnell in poll: What's going on?
Mike Castle might lose the Delaware Republican Senate primary Tuesday night. That鈥檚 what a new poll suggests, anyway. The Public Policy Polling (PPP) shows "tea party" choice Christine 翱鈥橠辞苍苍别濒濒 holding a three-point lead over Castle, 47 to 44 percent.
That鈥檚 a shock. Representative Castle 鈥� he鈥檚 currently Delaware鈥檚 lone House member 鈥� is a Delaware political icon. He鈥檚 twice been elected governor and has long had high positive ratings in a state where voters in the past have valued longevity and personal contact.
So what鈥檚 going on?
One possibility is that Castle鈥檚 possible fall, and Ms. 翱鈥橠辞苍苍别濒濒鈥檚 possible rise, reflects the depth of voter anger against incumbents and the power of the tea party brand.
Castle鈥檚 favorability ratings among state Republicans have taken a steep drop, according to PPP. A month ago the firm put his favorable rating at 60 percent among Delaware GOP voters. The new poll has a comparable figure of only 43 percent. Behind this slide seems to be a growing feeling among Republicans 鈥� 55 percent, according to the poll 鈥� that Castle is too liberal.
翱鈥橠辞苍苍别濒濒, a marketing consultant, has been running hard to Castle鈥檚 right. Her ads, for instance, talk about the 鈥淥bama-Castle agenda.鈥� She got a surprise endorsement from tea party hero Sarah Palin last week, and perhaps that鈥檚 helped her. Only about 30,000 Republicans are projected to vote in tomorrow鈥檚 primary, and that means anything can happen. Palin-fueled enthusiasm, plus $250,000 in ads from the Tea Party Express, could propel conservatives to the polls and send Castle home.
After all, national polls show that right now political enthusiasm is almost directly related to partisanship 鈥� the most excited voters are conservatives, the next most excited are moderate conservatives, and so on, all the way down the line to unexcited liberals.
The other possibility here is that the PPP poll that has everyone in Delaware so excited is an outlier.
PPP is a respected firm, and side-by-side comparisons have found its polls to be among the more accurate in the nation. But it also uses automated phone calling to do many of its surveys, and it鈥檚 not clear whether that aspect of the Castle survey might have affected its results. It鈥檚 more difficult to make sure your poll sample reflects the characteristics of the population you are trying to model when you use automated polling equipment. You can鈥檛 adjust quickly to get the right number of young people, the right number of middle-class voters, and so on.
Plus, the new Castle poll attempted to gauge the opinion, not just of Delaware Republicans generally, but of Delaware Republicans who are likely to vote. This 鈥渓ikely voter鈥� screen is notoriously difficult to get right, since the pollster in essence is making judgments about which combinations of personal characteristic make it more likely someone will actually get up and walk, drive, or bike to the polls on Election Day.
PPP is also often described as a Democratic-leaning firm. That should make little difference in the way it goes about framing surveys. But it is worth noting that Democrats would be overjoyed if Castle lost in tomorrow鈥檚 primary.
Delaware as a whole is not a conservative state, after all, and Castle presumably would do much better with the state鈥檚 overall electorate than with the subset of Republicans. At the Five Thirty Eight blog, polling expert that Castle, if he wins the primary, would have a 95 percent chance of beating Democratic nominee Chris Coons.
If 翱鈥橠辞苍苍别濒濒 wins the primary, she would have only a 17 percent change of winning the general election, according to Silver.
