{"id":1174,"date":"2009-10-24T11:21:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-24T15:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/10\/24\/new-poll-owens-up-5-scozzafava-in-2nd-place-hoffman-lags\/"},"modified":"2009-10-24T11:21:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-24T15:21:00","slug":"new-poll-owens-up-5-scozzafava-in-2nd-place-hoffman-lags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/10\/24\/new-poll-owens-up-5-scozzafava-in-2nd-place-hoffman-lags\/","title":{"rendered":"New poll: Owens up 5, Scozzafava in 2nd place; Hoffman lags"},"content":{"rendered":"

A poll out this week commissioned by the DailyKos<\/a> website shows Bill Owens expanding his lead ever so slightly, with the Democrat taking a 35% chunk of the district’s electorate.<\/p>\n

(That’s up 2 points over a week earlier.)<\/p>\n

The best news for Owens? He continues to lock in Democrats, grabbing 60% of his (adopted) party’s vote. That’s up about 12 points from earlier in the month.<\/p>\n

Dede Scozzafava is a respectable second, with 30% of the vote. That’s spitting distance in a race with 12% of voters still undecided.<\/p>\n

Given the challenges facing her campaign — lack of money, two-front battle — holding a second place position, within 5 points of the leader gives her bragging rights.<\/p>\n

Doug Hoffman, meanwhile, lags considerably, harnessing just 23%. This nudges him back toward “spoiler” status.<\/p>\n

This poll was taken through October 21st. That’s before the biggest conservative-movement surge for Hoffman (and before some Scozzafava missteps). But can he close a 12-point gap? <\/p>\n

Hoffman is doing great among Independents, but (surprisingly) not all that well among Republicans, where Scozzafava outstrips him by 20%.<\/p>\n

For self-identified Republicans, there’s really no contest here: They want Scozzafava.<\/p>\n

Hoffman’s campaign is beginning to look more like a traditional, third-party challenge, rather than a “true” Republican challenging an imposter, as he has suggested.<\/p>\n

Here’s Politico’s<\/a> take:<\/p>\n

The Daily Kos\/Research 2000 poll provides some encouraging news for Scozzafava, who remains in second place \u2013 and within striking distance of Owens \u2013 despite a week of bad publicity. It shows her leading Hoffman among Republican voters, 46 to 27 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some other interesting take-aways:<\/p>\n

The “public option” for healthcare reform is popular with a thin majority of North Country voters, with 52% favoring the idea.<\/p>\n

Barack Obama is still popular with 53% of the district’s voters.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, 53% oppose same-sex marriage, with only 39% supporting the idea.<\/p>\n

A final note: The question of the DailyKos poll’s credibility has been well-debated here.<\/p>\n

The survey is widely accepted — and in no place that I can find has anyone challenged it factually as a sincere effort to gather accurate information.<\/p>\n

So…unless someone has anything new on that front to offer, let’s talk about the new numbers and what they mean, and not rehash opinions about Kos…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A poll out this week commissioned by the DailyKos website shows Bill Owens expanding his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[874],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}