Anti-Mourdock polling games in Indiana? (Update – Rasmussen has 3 pt spread, not 11 like Howey)
A poll was released yesterday by the Howey Politics website in Indiana purporting to show Democrat Joe Donnelly up by 11 points over Richard Mourdock.
That seemed improbable, even with the controversy over Mourdock’s recent comments, as Indiana is a heavily Republican-voting state, will vote strongly for Romney, and all other polling (which is limited in Indiana) showed a dead heat even days after the controversy.
Howey is relentlessly hostile to Mourdock, something I have seen since I first started following the Indiana primary last fall. The poll was conducted by a Democratic and Republican pollster, but the Mourdock campaign is crying foul and demanding release of the unweighted polling data and cross-tabs:
“Fred Yang is a well-known Democrat who works for the DSCC and has a clear conflict of interest in this race. Christine Matthews is backpedaling on this poll. Brian Howey scrambled together a conference call this morning to defend his weighted poll data, but said he won’t release the original, unweighted data and cross tabs. Given these facts, Hoosiers have every right to be skeptical of this survey and we call on Brian Howey to change his position and release the unweighted data and cross tabs of this alleged poll.” Deputy Campaign Manager Brose McVey said.
The Republican half of the polling team is a little wobbly on the meaning of the poll, although apparently she says she is not “backpedaling”:
Another Indiana blogger is suspicious as well. As of this writing Howey is refusing to release the unweighted results.
We’ll follow this and keep you informed.
Update: Mourdock’s own polling, by McLaughlin and Associates, shows Mourdock up by 2 points.
Also, Rasmussen just released a poll showing Donnelly up by 3 points. That’s believable, and well within reach of Mourdock if there is a strong evangelical and Tea Party turnout (Lugar Republicans are trying to undermine Mourdock):
Democratic Congressman Joe Donnelly has a three-point lead over Republican Richard Mourdock in the closing days of Indiana’s U.S. Senate race.The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Indiana Voters shows Donnelly with 45% support to Mourdock’s 42%. A surprisingly large number of voters either prefer another candidate in the race (6%) or remain undecided (6%).
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