According to polling results from Democrat Jay Fawcett, not only can he upset Republican Doug Lamborn in CD-5…he’s leading by a wide margin.
As Colorado Confidential reports:
Jay Fawcett’s campaign manager momentarily paused after rattling off the results of what she describes as the most comprehensive poll conducted among potential voters in Colorado’s overwhelmingly Republican 5th Congressional District.
• 41 percent were likely to vote for Fawcett, the Democrat.
• 28 percent were likely to vote for Republican Doug Lamborn.
• Another 28 percent are undecided.“I kid you not,” said Wanda James.
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but then, maybe, a change in the big line?
Maybe it is just your levelheaded commentary, EPRR, but I can actually see this poll being, if not completely on the mark, close to actuality in CD-5. I think a lot of people can relate to Fawcett if for no other reason than his military background. Now i dont know much about the race, except what I gleen from here, but it seems that being primary free gave fawcett a way to seperate himself from the fracious republican party. Since Lamborn only got 27% of the vote, I think, I think a lot of people see Fawcett as a placeholder for Crank, or some other yet-to-be-named republican challenger.
But it is still important to see the method used and the demographics. Hopefully they will be posted soon.
Yes Mr. Toodles. Everyone lay person in the district is carefully attuned to Fawcett as a placeholder for Jeff “Mandate of the People” Crank. Why, when I go outside and talk to people on the street, you know what they tell me? They say, “I’mma vote for Fawcett so I can vote for Crank in two years, and even though I’m one of the three quarters of the Repubicans that voted against him the in the primary, you can count on me in two years when he’s going against an incumbent!” You’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head there Toodles.
the vote him out tactic will be next to impossible.
First there’s incumbency. Then there’s Jay’s intelligence and vast superiority (not political, but credentials, experience) over the gang of 6 on the otheR side. They had been planning this move for years – yet it turned into a cf thanks to Doug.
Also, Jay smartly attended many of the forums with the 6 and has been seen by many of the same voters.
These numbers are realistic – I’m just hoping Republican voters see the horrible failures of their party and start to take it back. It that holds, Jay wins.
where are the 527s and other ads on behalf of fawcett? nowhere to be found.
if jay was going to have a chance hed be much more visible right now, realizing the importance of absentee votes and just getting his name out there. he doesnt have the big money coming in that is needed to overcome the big republican advantage.
debates can only go so far, as many do not watch them.
As I said elsewhere in this post. I believe this “poll” was released to try and muster up some 527 and PAC support. There’s not a lot of it for Jay as things stand now.
i liked the old days when i was a “crank shill”. maybe i need to resume my lamborn-bashing.
but yes, of course it was released to muster support, yet in my mind this type of (questionable) poll should have been released a month ago, it is too late now.
but she has never met with the wrath of social conservatives. Lamborn is the next Congressman.
Let’s wait and see what happens in November.
Will other 5th CD Republicans join me in voting not for Fawcett but against Lamborn?
Two years with a Democratic Congressman isn’t nearly as bad as a lifetime of sleezy Doug. At least, Fawcett will be out in two years. Think about it.
NOPE, NOT, NO, NIET, NIEN, NADA, NEVER EVER,NEVER EVER NEVER in a BAZILLION YEARS, and then the proverbial N.O. as in HELL NO!!!
Much as I want Fawcett to win, and I do think he has a chance, there’s no way.
Maybe, just maybe, if people aren’t sure who the Republican is (and that is possible – most people don’t care about the election yet) something like this could hold.
But if the vote was tomorrow? I don’t think it would come out like this…
If the election were to be held tomorrow, I think it would come out this way (Fawcett 41%, Stillborn 28%, and 28% undecideds). Most of the undecideds would stay home or skip the C.D. 5 race on the ballot.
Unfortunately, the vote is not tomorrow. Over the next six or so weeks, except those 28% undecideds to get lurid mailings accusing Jay Fawcett of being everything short of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s secret lover and Ted Kennedy’s drinking buddy.
There will also be robo-calls from prominent and still popular Republicans asking the 28% to hold their noses and vote for Stillborn to keep a GOP House.
While I’m still rooting for Lt. Col. Fawcett and I think he’d make a fine Congressman, it’s still going to take an upset as well as some more mis-steps on the part of Stillborn to see this seat go to a Dem.
You underestimate the Republican hit machine. Reverse Clinton and Kennedy in your above sentence, and you’ll be closer to the mark.
Go ahead!
The people have had enough. Vote Democratic. Hold the Republicans accountable.
I have a hard time putting a lot of faith in internal polls. Especially ones that aren’t straight up and down. It seems in this one people “were queried on a vast array of subjects — including potential positives and negatives for both candidates”.
Reminds me of Lionel Reivera’s internal in the primary that showed him with close to twice the support of any other candidate. Didn’t quite turn out that way. Seems like Jay just wants to prove he has a chance for the big-boy PAC’s in DC to throw him some money.
highly plausable and intelligent thought. Fawcett and his numbers. Remember folks, “Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.” Or is it, statistics, and then damn statistics!!
Those numbers are highly suspect to me. KID ME NOT YOU SAY???
To this I respond:
“You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” …Abraham Lincoln
When all of you Denver Dems find out the realities of El Paso County, then give those folks a call. In order for Fawcett to win, the must have a campaign. Even from here, I see very little of the man making any in roads in El Paso County.
If wishes were fishes, maybe he might. NOT!!!
In addition, the poll found that:
* Nearly 2 in 3 indicated that they would consider voting for a Democrat (64 percent).
* Nearly 3 in 4 would consider voting for Fawcett (74 percent).
So in other words, 10% of those polled would NOT consider voting for a democrat, but WOULD consider voting for Fawcett. I’m having trouble getting that one past my valid logic filter.
If this poll is accurate (which I doubt), Fawcett just shot himself in the foot by releasing them. Too many GOP that might have stayed home in protest, thinking that Lamborn would still win, will think twice about it if they think a Democrat might win. The Republicans in C.S. are too organized and too many in number to let this happen.
Just watch. Republicans that were blasting Lamborn just yesterday will be doing a 180 and supporting him.
That gap looks high, but not incredibly high. That’s why there’s always a margin of error in polls.
I was looking at a recent Pew Research Poll about religion and politics (http://pewforum.org/…). One of the stranger results were that 4% of secular respondents consider themselves part of the religious right and 3% consider themselves part of the religious left. Huh?
Too bad the next question wasn’t, “Do you know the meaning of secular?”
I do have a hard time believing these poll results just because I’ve never heard of that polling group before and, more importantly, I just have a hard time believing Fawcett would be leading in this district.
I’m afraid there’s more than 10% that find it easier to vote just on party affiliation rather than to actually have to read or listen to information about the actual candidates.
Oh, I know that one. Secular: “not belonging to a religious order”. Okay, so I’m secular, and I consider myself part of the religious left.
The margin of error in polls relates to the number of people who might have different opinions but were not asked. There’s a mathematical process for determining confidence intervals for samples. The margin of error doesn’t cover bozos who can’t answer consistently in this one poll. Whatever is the case with people who were not asked (sampling error), it remains the fact that at least 10% of the people who WERE asked said they would not consider voting for a democrat, but would consider voting for Jay Fawcett.
Not a big deal, but definitely curious.
My guess is that the #’s that Wanda is touting came at the end of the poll after Lamborn’s negatives were pushed as well as Fawcett’s positives.
Fine and dandy, though it is doubtful to me that the Lamborn campaign would be silent the rest of the election while Jay ran TV ads promoting himself while tarnishing Doug.
Lamborn by 15, John Galt kids you not.
It would be great if these numbers seemed legit, but after all the hooplah in the Perlmutter primary, I’m pretty sensetive to polling manipulation to stir press.
My overriding desire to see the Dems retake the house keeps making me hold out hope for this race although it’s a bigger longshot than I think many are predicting. I agree that it was perhaps a bad strategic move to release the poll though – I’m not even sure what the point of it was except to maybe scare up some extra fundraising or just generate a little excitement. Frankly, I don’t see either of those as particularly great rewards considering the potential backlash.
I am definitely holding my judgement on this one until I see what questions were asked and who they polled. The thing that makes me the most skeptical is the line that says,
“Additional details of the poll will be released later this week.” Why not release it when you release the results? I will bet they have some donors waiting in the wings for this data.
I think there might be more about the poll dribbling out today, so hopefully we won’t have to wait a long time.
I believe the polling outfit is a Dem insider polling group, but that they follow some standard methodology that wouldn’t unduly skew the results. Most of these polls put the “informed voter” question towards the beginning of the poll, so it wouldn’t have been affected by any additional positive/negative questions in the poll.
As to the 64% would consider voting Democratic vs 74% would consider voting for Jay, informed voter questions don’t usually specify the candidate’s party, which is why Jay’s numbers are so high. These numbers are pretty telling; without any real statistical analysis attached, perhaps 10% of the voters vote Republican out of some irrational hatred for the Democratic Party and not based on the candidate’s values. Furthermore, I suspect that Lamborn’s tax and religious positions were mentioned in the “informed voter” statement, so those 10% aren’t rabid anti-tax or Dominionist wingers, but rather solid traditional (possibly military?) conservatives.
. . . but, there is hope!
The thing that really distresses me about this campaign is that they have ZERO ground game. All they seem to want is money. Money alone (although it helps tremendously) is not going to win an election for a Dem in CD 5.
The Republican candidate is *always* going to have more money there. The only way to combat this is to get a TON of volunteers out there walking the streets, co-ordinating with the state legislature campaigns and pushing the “personal touch”.
Fawcett’s campaign has not done this at all. They really need to get more grassroots style in their campaign. Instead they spend a bunch of money on a poll to encourage donations, and are still ignoring the voters.
Does anybody happen to know what each candidate has raised and spent? Sorry to ask, but I don’t have time to go wade through the FEC filings this morning.
I only ask because I think Jay looks better if he can achieve some spending parity with Lamborn. The #1 indicator for these races is district partisanship, closely followed by total campaign spending – which for an open-seat particularly means direct mail spending and TV spending.
Anyway, I agree that a major league colunteer effort is needed if he doesn’t have the right kind of money, but with the GOP in such bad shape this year and Bush polling so low, I’m giving extra weight to the financial side of things. In that respect, they may not be so far off the mark if they’re using all their resources to bring in more cash.
What are you talking about? Have you been to the Fawcett field operation on N. Weber? They have one of the most extensive field operations in the history of El Paso County — and they ARE working with local candidates out of that office as well.
I am pretty heavily involved down here, and I NEVER hear from them.
“They have one of the most extensive field operations in the history of El Paso County”
Bullshit. John Morse is knocking on more doors than Fawcett.
http://www.thecherry…
The article is from the Fawcett campaign, but, I note the following:
“With these new polling numbers and Hefley’s repudiation of Lamborn, we’re taking a close look at this race,” said Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
That sounds like the potential for some coins instead of chatter.
Although I’m interested to see how much they put in considering Dem’s need to win, what is it, 15 seats to take back the house. There are many others (including two in this state) that are more winnable. If the Dem’s goal is to win the house, they have many more favorable battles to wage.
The DNC announced an arrangement with the DCCC today whereby the DNC will commit money to 40 Congressional candidates. (Much more than just the 15 they need to take control…) Expenditures are expected to be a somewhat limited $60k each on average; there are no indications that I know of yet on which 40 seats are up for the cash.
This is Howard Dean’s organization; he might look at races like Jay’s with a more positive eye than Rahm Emmanuel might. So if Rahm is saying “hmm”, the DNC might be the logical way for Rahm to promote Jay without being too closely associated with longshot candidacies. The D-trip isn’t short on cash lately, either, so there’s the possibility that even DCCC money might make it into CO-05 before election day…
Go, Jay!
the results of this poll to the poll the same pollsters conducted for the Fawcett campaign in May ? As of right now, they’re still on his website, under “press.”
Seems I recollect that the results were about the same even before the Republicans selected Sen. Lamborn in their primary, and even before the sleazy tactics.
In May, the results were announced with the same sort of exuberance. But the questions, methodology, etc. never released.
Good point. This newest poll, and Fawcett’s poll from May are almost identical (same poller as well).
http://www.fawcett4c…
No one noticed back then, so they just re-released it with a bit more fanfare.
In that poll there was skewed data too.
31% said they would definitely vote R.
22% said they would vote for the generic R candidate.
Can someone explain that to me?
http://www.gazette.c…
The article said that it detailed the candidates backgrounds, citing Fawcett’s military record and Lamborn’s conservative record. Full methodology absent from the article makes me think that they glossed over the whole D/R identifier, which makes a big difference come election day.
Party loyalty excuses one from a whole lot of thought. If you get a person’s attention long enough, their actual views on issues sometimes have little to do with how they vote.
If you look at Sealover’s article in the Gazette, he mentions that 52% of those polled were Republicans and 21% were Democrat so the Fawcett poll actually oversampled Repub voters. The other thing Sealover mentioned was that the poll was conducted before Hefley’s scathing remarks against Lamborn; so for those two reasons, it doesn’t really seem like the poll numbers are unfathomable or even inflated. PEOPLE ARE READY FOR CHANGE!!!
The release fails to mention 1) What questions were asked of voters 3)The order of those questions asked 3) What response (if any) was given to a straight up and down vote 4) The demographics of those polled 5) The likelyhood of those polled will vote 4) Any relevant corollary data (positives, negatives) 6) How people polled were prepped for the question of supporting Fawcett or Lamborn 7) Where those polled come from (El Paso, outlying counties), and a bunch of other pertinent facts.
This poll returns the same (wihtin margin of error) numbers that Fawcett put out against a generic R candidate in May. So I believe this one about as much as I believe that one. Fawcett is just hoping that he can convince DCCC he has a shot so they’ll give him some money.
“Fawcett is apparently trying to deceive voters because he knows that once they learn the truth about his liberal Democrat agenda they will continue to flock to Senator Lamborn.”
Flock to Lamborn my ass! He lost me after his win in the primary when he refused to “flock” to the voters who didn’t support him.
Handy Dandy,
I doubt, from your posts, that Lamborn ever “had” you to begin with.