Oh please let Randy lose. A Democratic Congress and Randy Kuhl gone will make for a good night.

Wow is right. NY-23 is the only “safe” Republican seat left in NYS?

Holy @#%*

Actually, with numbers like these NY-23 might not be so safe after all.

“Wow is right. NY-23 is the only “safe” Republican seat left in NYS?”

With numbers like these, even NY-23 might not be safe.

NY-23 is the only “safe” Republican seat left in NYS?

What’s going on with NY-13 (Fossella)? I think it may be safe too.

My parents live in NY-23 and I was just there. I did see a surprising number of Johnson signs and no McHugh signs (granted I was in Madison County, which is more Democratic than most of NY-23, I suspect).

I’m still disappointed we couldn’t get someone from Wu Tang to run in NY-13 (Staten Island). Though I guess with names like Ole Dirty Bastard people would assume you were a Republican.

wow, as great as those would be, i have to be very, very skeptical.

i wouldn’t be surprised if the Dems in those races have drawn even or are leading, but not by those margins.

Oops, missed NY-13. So two safe seats - still major trouble for the Republicans.

I’m skeptical. The people at Daily Kos thought that the poll numbers were flaky and I haven’t seen any other poll that gives the Dems in NY-25 and NY-29 such a huge lead. It’s also three weeks out from the election, so anything can happen. The only way I’ll believe these numbers are legit is when I see them in the exit polls.

Maffei’s polling showed him moving up (it was something like 20 points behind 4 or 5 months ago, and 4 points behind a month ago)… all of his improvements were consistent with an increased name recognition statistic. As such it seems to make sense that he’d be up by 8 points right now since his name recognition has also gone up.

I’m not sure about the specifics of the other polls, but this is certainly fantastic news coming from a non-partisan source like Cook’s.

The only negative is that people might get comfortable and assume that their vote for Democrats isn’t necessary since it’s already “in the bag.” Be sure to remind everyone that their vote is still very important and those numbers don’t mean a thing if we can’t get out the vote on 11/7.

down here in the southern tier the Massa/Kuhl race is deffinately very close, as the poll would suggest with a 1 point lead for Kuhl, Up there does it really feel like a 26 point advantage for Massa?? Down here we feel very suspect about this poll because it just doesnt seem possible. I will say Massa signs out number Kuhl signs at least 2:1 but theres a whole lot of people (down here) who will vote for Kuhl because they don’t like Dems in general.

I feel that I have no reason to be particulalry skeptical. There’s only one new wrinkle in their methodology and it sounds like a good one: they look at past voting records to gauge whether or not you are a likley voter.

Here’s something most people don’t know: robopolls have much better track records than Gallup et al. I trust this poll less than I would Survey USA or Rasmussen (the two with the best track records, both robopolls) but more than Gallup.

the Sienna Poll out today on NY 20 has a completely different story, with Sweeney up by 14 points, 53-39.

http://blogs.timesunion.com/capitol/?p=2474

One of them is WAY off.

Everyone -

Assume nothing. I remember going from “happy” listening to exit poll data in 2004 to “depressed” after the polls closed.

Polls are nice and they change depending on who conducts the polls.

The only poll that matters is the one in November. Get out and work with your candidates to increase name recognition and get the vote out.

The Sienna poll is garbage. I’ll take the Majority Watch over them.

Just to be clear: I don’t _especially_ trust Majority Watch. I only trust Rasmusen and Survey USA. Majority Watch is in the garbage heap with all other polls (besides Rasumssen and Survey USA). But university polls are on the bottom.

You can go read what an actual statistician type wrote into Daily Politics about this.

One more thing: polls are a weapon. Make no mistake. A good poll number drives down contributions to your opponent and it builds a sense that you are ‘inevitable”. Karl Rove is a master of using this.

When I see a good poll, I see it as something to strangle the opponent with not to hang myslef with.

[...] Losers whine when they see poll results they don’t like. Here’s the Kuhl campaign on the Majority Watch poll showing them 12 points behind Massa: Bob Van Wicklin, Kuhl’s deputy chief of staff, questioned the objectivity of the Majority Watch poll and the manner in which it was conducted. “It’s a left-leaning group. I wouldn’t call them independent. They’re a group that wants to see a Democratic majority in Congress, from what I understand,” Van Wicklin said. “And we don’t know anything about the methodology of the poll, other than the little information they gave, so we’re sort of skeptical about the questions they may have asked, or how they asked them. [...]

[...] There was some debate in the comments earlier about whether NY-23 was the only safe Republican Congressional seat in New York State. After some deliberation, we decided that Vito Fossella’s seat in NY-13 (Staten Island, or Shaolin as it is known to the Wu-Tang Clan) was also safe. Not so fast, says Congressional Quarterly: With New York 13 hardly immune to the volatile political atmosphere facing Republicans in general this year, CQPolitics.com has changed its rating on the race to Republican Favored from Safe Republican. [...]