Senate 2008 Guru: Following the Races

Keeping a close eye on developments in the 2008 U.S. Senate races

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

August Senate Approval Numbers from Survey USA

SUSA is up with their August numbers.

New August numbers in bold, 7/24/07 numbers in italics, 6/19/07 numbers underlined, 5/24/07 numbers in arrows, 4/24/07 in brackets, 11/22/06 in parenthesis

Republicans:
Norm Coleman: 47-44 43-48 48-41 <51-42> [53-41] (48-43)
Pete Domenici: 52-41 55-41 51-42 <52-42> [54-38] (68-25)
Mitch McConnell: 50-43 48-44 52-42 <54-39> [53-40] (54-39)
Pat Roberts: 54-33 52-34 51-37 <52-36> [48-39] (51-36)
Jeff Sessions: 59-33 58-33 59-33 <60-31> [54-36] (58-32)
Gordon Smith: 46-44 48-43 47-45 <48-39> [51-41] (54-37)
John Warner: 57-33 53-40 53-34 <62-29> [55-33] (60-28)

Democrats:
Tom Harkin: 57-35 55-38 51-38 <56-36> [57-38] (53-40)
John Kerry: 47-45 52-42 50-46 <47-47> [54-41] (48-50)

Observations:
1) While Senator Tom Harkin continues to look safe, Senator John Kerry's approval has dipped back below 50. C'mon, NRSC! Just $10 million separates you from a Senate seat in Massachusetts. Tempting...
2) Gordon Smith sees his worst numbers ever (just as Speaker Jeff Merkley is entering the race in Oregon), and Coleman, McConnell, and Domenici all languish.
3) Pat Roberts' numbers crept back up into the mid-50's, but I still think we can have a competitive Senate race in Kansas in 2008 pitting the right Democrat against a lackluster Roberts record.
4) For the second month in a row, Survey USA doesn't have numbers from Texas. I wouldn't be shocked if the Cornyn camp paid off the poll sponsors to stop polling, since Cornyn's numbers were so utterly lousy.

3 Comments:

Blogger Tim Wolfe said...

Re: A Senate seat in MA...

Give it up, Guru. The NRSC won't go for it... because they don't have $10 million. Last check they only have $6.5M, and we're a third of the way through the cycle.

I'm wondering what Ensign even hopes to do with so little money.

1:34 PM, August 22, 2007  
Blogger Woody said...

Pete Dominici has troubles with the laws of physics: Objects at rest tend to remain at rest, while objects in motion tend to remain in motion.

For a decade or two Dominici was at rest in his Senate seat. But after he was exposed as having pressured the US Attorney to take partisan action, and then retaliated when he refused to do so, Dominici's approval rating began to roll downhill. It will never return to a place above 60%. With a strong campaign it will continue its momentum below 50%, leading to his defeat in 2008.

1:54 PM, August 22, 2007  
Blogger Sunnysider said...

Again, it is even more telling that the approval for the Democratic counterparts generally outpaces these 2008 Republicans. Bingaman, Klobuchar, etc. are more popular. About the only Dems less popular are those elected in 2006 (see Webb and Brown)...

9:21 AM, August 23, 2007  

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