Public Policy Polling (PPP): Dems leading in both Maine congressional districts

[WI_DEM]

Both of Maine's Congressional races are looking more competitive than usual, with the incumbents facing tepid approval ratings and holding single digit leads:

1st:

Chellie Pingree leads challenger Dean Scontras 47-38. Voters in the district are evenly divided on Pingree's job performance with 40% approving of her and 39% disapproving. She's benefiting from a pretty weak opponent in Scontras. 65% of voters have no opinion about him and among those who do only 15% see him positively with 20% holding a negative view.

Both candidates have their party base pretty much locked up with Pingree getting 81% of Democrats and Scontras 78% of Republicans. Pingree's solid overall advantage comes because she's ahead 49-27 with independents. She's outrunning her 38/38 approval numbers with that group of voters by a good bit, suggesting that incumbency and name recognition might still be worth something even this year.

Pingree's numbers have to be seen as pretty decent across the back drop of the district, where Barack Obama's approval is slightly under water at 48% of voters disapproving of him to 46% giving him good marks.

2nd:

Mike Michaud leads Jason Levesque 45-38. That may be a closer margin than he's become accustomed to in recent elections but it's better than a lot of other Democrats are doing in districts where Barack Obama's all the way down at 41%.

Michaud actually has slightly negative approval numbers with 39% of voters giving him good reviews and 41% disapproving. But like Pingree he's benefiting from the fact that he has an unknown and not particularly well liked opponent. 68% of voters don't know enough about Levesque to have formed an opinion and his favorability is a negative 15/17 spread with those who have.

This race is probably going to tighten up because 21% of Republicans are undecided while only 10% of Democrats are. Michaud has his party base pretty much locked up at 81% while Levesque's getting only 65% of his party as many remain undecided. Michaud is also leading 43-34 with independents despite the fact that they disapprove of him by a 34/46 margin.

Obviously it's better to be ahead than behind so in that sense these numbers are good news for Democrats. But Pingree and Michaud's leads are largely predicated on weak opposition rather than their own popularity so it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the last 8 weeks if the Republicans have the resources to really run strong campaigns. And if this is where the numbers are in these generally Democratic leaning districts you wonder how bad off Democratic incumbents are in some of the districts where we haven't seen any polling.

http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/

[Cha]

1. Thanks WI DEM~

[FBaggins]

2. What caused them to poll these two races?

Neither of them should be anywhere close to this competitive.

Obviously it's a concern, but I wonder what caused PPP to decide "Hey... let's poll a couple races that are 'Safe D' and see what we find"

[Cosmocat]

3. I'm sorry ...

a 45-38 lead by an R would catagorized as a LOCK R lead, and a 47-38 lead would be catagorized as no need to even have the election ...

Even from PPP, framing - Ds in trouble, Rs on the prowl ...

[FBaggins]

4. Nope.

A 45-38 lead by an incumbent is not a lock. Any time an incumbent is that far below 50% (assuming a 2-way race of course) with that many undecided's - it's a potentially competitive race. Look at Burr here in NC. He averages 6-8 point leads in most of the polls, but with the exception of rasmussen polls is almost never over 50%. His race is "leans R" in the some rankings and we're treating it as a potential pickup (were it not for the larger enthusiasm gap, I think the race would be a tossup). Vitter's seat was similar (though it's starting to inexplicably slip away). PPP had him leading by 12 in July of last year... but the headline was that he was vulnerable, because he only had 44% of the vote.

Again... I'm not saying the races are a tossup or even just "leans D" - I'm saying these races are not on anybody's list. There are over 100 democrats who are more likely to lose their seats. There shouldn't be a democratic pollster who even thinks they need to poll there - and if they do we shouldn't see incumbents that far below 50%.

We won one of those districts by 2:1 last time for goodness sake. We won it by 71-29% in 2006. Our guy had ten times as much cash on hand in the last filing and he's running against a two-time college dropout in his 30s. Why is a sacrificial lamb in the running in a safe district?

Even from PPP, framing - Ds in trouble, Rs on the prowl

By "framing" I presume you mean "telling an artificial story for the sake of influencing behavior." PPP has done that in the past, but they do it for us.

[Cosmocat]

5. Yeah ...

I made that point ... PPP is definitelty not democrat unfriendly ...

The larger point stands, incumbant or not, the media would frame an 8 point lead by an R as rock solid ...

And, be honest, by your work here, if the script was totally flipped, you would be saying the D was dead in the water ...

I pointed out the larger "liberal media" nonsense, but the least you can do is have some personal intellectual honesty about it ...

[FBaggins]

6. LOL

So you're going to claim that in the reverse situation I would claim the D was dead in the water... in direct reply to a post where I talked about a local race that is the reverse situation and called it the same way?

And to think you put "intellectual honesty" in your post. Thanks. I needed a chuckle.

I call the races consistently. The difference is entirely the result of the polling being so skewed. Some people would prefer to stick their heads in the sand, but it required them to call the rest of us names (and ignore the fact that groups like PPP are saying the exact same thing).

[KingFlorez]

7. Good news, considering these are both seats that could be lost in a wave

Both have got a race to run, but they are still in good shape considering the environment.

[FBaggins]

8. That would have to be one heck of a "wave".

Prior to seeing these polls I would have said that if we lose these two seats, we've lost 80-100 others.

Only the toe sucker has made that kind of a wild prediction.