Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here. Leading Off: ' ND-Sen: North Dakota Democrats have just put out a new poll from DFM Research that finds former AG Heidi Heitkamp leading GOP Rep. Rick Berg 49-44 in the open-seat Senate contest (up from 42-41 in December, numbers which were not publicized at the time). Barack Obama trails Mitt Romney by a very wide 51-32 margin, so you can't accuse this poll of being too rosy'especially since the spread was a narrower 40-28 in December. (Though 28% for an incumbent president in any state... ouch.)
This is only the second public survey of the race, and the first (from back in November) also showed Heitkamp on top by five points, 47-42. Republicans didn't have an answer to that poll, and if they don't have an answer to this one, either, then we may have to reconsider our "Lean R" rating here. Indeed, Berg paid $24,000 to Republican pollster Public Opinion Strategies for "survey research" in early January, and we never saw those numbers, so the absence of any contrary Republican data is starting to look a bit glaring.
Meanwhile, according to reports, they DSCC is about to go up on TV with an ad buy worth some $76K. (A sum like that goes pretty far in a tiny state like North Dakota.) As Politico's Maggie Haberman notes, that would make this the first independent expenditure by either national Senate campaign committee this cycle. We'll keep a look out for the DSCC's ad and bring it to you as soon as we see it.
No comments:
Post a Comment