And the Race Begins........

With a nod to Darryl over at Hominid Views , it appears the huge and commanding (heretofore, “insurmountable”) 17 point lead that Maria Cantwell held over Mike! “Mini-Slade” McGavick just barely three weeks ago has dwindled back to a 6-point (48% to 42%) lead that falls just outside the 4.5% +/- margin of error. The new numbers take us back to the June 13th numbers (44% to 40%) that some have argued prompted Senator Cantwell to “buy out” a chief rival and start releasing a series of “re-defined” positions on Iraq to placate the Progressive wing of her party.

Darryl offers a couple of possible explanations for the earlier 17-point lead now appearing to be an anomaly, ” This new poll shows the race closer than the Rasmussen poll closing on September 6th that had Cantwell leading 52% to 35%. Some of the difference may reflect ordinary sampling error; however, the previous poll may have been particularly bad for Mike!™ because of his botched DUI confession.” I might suggest it could also have something to do with the fact that the day AFTER the poll was announced, the media began to talk about a possible lobbyist problem that may have somewhat tarnished the image of our junior senator.

So we are back where we started. We have an incumbent senator who has fallen back under the 50% mark standing almost even with a politically shrewd challenger who has pretty much put his dirtiest laundry out in public and remains standing. Considering that 10% of Democrats in the recent primary chose “other” and that there will be two 3rd party challengers (both running to the left) in the general election, it will be interesting to see where Senator Cantwell goes for those winning votes.

UPDATE:
Apparently David Goldstein over at HorsesAss.org agrees with my assesment - well, sort of......"Assuming my sources are correct, we now have two independent polls, two weeks apart, that peg this race within the margin of error. That’s not a good place for an incumbent to be six weeks before the election."



Peace,
Chad (The Left) Shue