Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here. Leading Off: ' NE-Sen: If Republican-affiliated pollster We Ask America's new numbers are right, we're in for a remarkable upset in the Nebraska Senate GOP primary. AG Jon Bruning, who pretty much led this race wire-to-wire, all of a sudden finds himself in second place to state Sen. Deb Fischer, 39-34 (Treasurer Don Stenberg's faded to 18). That's an almost hard-to-believe turnaround from WAA's poll just a week ago, which had Bruning up 42-26 over Fischer, with Stenberg at 23'a monster 21-point shift. Note, though, that the poll was in the field for just one day (Mother's Day'a Sunday, of course), and once again, WAA didn't allow respondents to say they were "undecided," which is a discouraged practice.
But if there's any possible explanation for this, it's that zillionaire Joe Ricketts (whose family owns the Chicago Cubs, who's a founder of brokerage TD Ameritrade, and who's also the dad of failed 2006 GOP Senate nominee Pete Ricketts) dumped $200K on to the airwaves at the last minute. Ricketts' group, called "Ending Spending," has two spots out, one trying to knock down Bruning and the other aiming to buff up Fischer.
Ricketts also paid for a poll of his own, from right-wing pollster Wenzel Strategies. The numbers aren't quite as favorable for Fischer as WAA's, though Wenzel did offer respondents the option to say they were "undecided." Like WAA's survey, it was also a Sunday-only affair. In any event, they find Bruning with a narrow 38-35 lead over Fischer, with Stenberg relegated to obscurity at just 16%. Jair Herbstman (aka jmartin4s) reminds me that Wenzel also conducted a poll of NE-Sen back in February for a pro-Bruning group and found Bruning at 48, Stenberg at 19, and Fischer at 10. Ouch!
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