“Well those poll numbers aren’t looking good…” -Mark Udall
In September, a Rasmussen poll had Rep. Cory Gardner losing to Sen. Mark Udall by 2 points; in the beginning of October a Rasmussen poll had Gardner only up by 1 point; now, a Rasmussen poll today has Gardner up by 6 points. -2, +1, +6, anyone else see a trend here?
Yet, it isn’t this poll alone that makes us believe Udall will soon have all the time in the world to climb as many mountains as he likes, rather, it’s all the polls put together. As the Geoffrey Skelley, the associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball (one of the most prominent national prognosticators) tweeted out yesterday (h/t Mike Littwin):
6 Senate races have RCP & HuffPo avg. margins of <3.0 pts. Since ’04, averages have only missed races that had margins of ≤3.0.
— Geoffrey Skelley (@geoffreyvs) October 26, 2014
What’s the polling average for Gardner over at Real Clear Politics right now? 3.2 Now, at the uber-liberal Huffington Post averages, he’s only at 2.5, but that lower number is only achieved when they factor in two internal polls that Democrats have released. Internal polls are like the death rattle of every losing campaign. Wheeze, wheeze, sputter, sputter, Bannock Street, wheeze, wheeze, sputter, sputter, internal polling. Harry Enten, the senior political writer over at FiveThirtyEight adroitly put Udall’s internal polls in their place when he tweeted:
So two organizations supporting Dems had Udall up 3 a few weeks ago, now we should be impressed with internal polls showing him up 1? — Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) October 27, 2014
So, quick, everyone who wants to claim a slice of credit in helping defeat Udal, hop on the bandwagon and start working out your story of how you’ve been here all along. We here at the Peak are already burnishing our credentials by tossing this out there as the theme song for the final week of Udall’s campaign: