Category Archives: Polls

Polls taken in the district, or polls relevant to the race.

Second Siena Poll Shows Brooks Gaining

Posted on by

The latest Siena Poll [pdf] shows Louise Slaughter with a 4 point lead over Maggie Brooks. That’s consistent with Charlie Cook’s new NY-25 PVI released a few days ago, D+5. That means, all other things being equal, a Democrat has a five point advantage in this district.

The question for next month is whether Brooks’ campaign has given Democrats a reason to vote for her instead of Slaughter. The crossstabs show that Brooks cut into Slaughter’s huge Democratic preference (Slaughter’s down to 81% vs 86% among Democrats in the last poll), solidified her Republican base a bit (2% gain), but is losing some ground among Independents.

Finally, A Poll

Posted on by

Siena has Louise Slaughter up by 10 points over Maggie Brooks in NY-25. The internals [pdf] are interesting:

  • Louise’s favorables (59%) are higher than Maggie’s (51%). Barack Obama’s favorables (55%) are also higher than Maggie’s, so running an anti-Obama campaign (on Brooks’ part) or running away from Obama (by Slaughter) don’t make a lot of sense.
  • Voters believe Slaughter would do a better job in every category (jobs, health care, education, Afghanistan, taxes and representing Rochester in DC) except the federal deficit, where Brooks has a slight edge.
  • Louise has a 50/39 lead over Brooks among Independents. And Brooks leads Slaughter 50/39 among Independents. 21% of Republicans say they’ll vote for Slaughter, versus 11% of Democrats who support Brooks.
  • Only the Western suburbs favor Brooks (53/43). Slaughter leads in the East (49/45), which is consistent with how those suburbs have voted in other Congressional elections.

Overall, there’s no good news for Brooks in this poll, unless there’s a secret Republican plan to double turnout in Greece and Chili. It’s consistent with the views I’ve expressed here earlier: NY-25 is a Democratic district and Maggie Brooks’ success in low-turnout races doesn’t mean a lot in a Presidential year.

That said, this is just one poll. National polling sites that make incredibly accurate predictions about the Presidential race are powered by hundreds of polls that they combine to limit error. It’s very rare for a Congressional race to get a fraction of the polling attention that even Senate races are getting, so I doubt we’ll see many more polls in this race.

Poll Mentions Morelle

Posted on by

Rachel Barnhart has been hearing about a poll comparing Maggie Brooks with Louise Slaughter (no surprise) and Monroe County Democratic Chair Assemblyman Joe Morelle (big surprise).

In addition to Rachel’s guesses (centered around Louise’s health), this could just be a simple “what if” comparing a lesser-known Democrat to a well-known one to gauge the bottom of Democratic support in the district. I was polled a few times by someone interested in the 2010 Jim Alesi race in my district, and they compared him to a couple of well-known Republicans and Democrats.