Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Charlottesville, VA, USA. more »
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2 replies on “WSJ: Webb in the lead.”
I welcome this news, but I wish that more people would point out that this is Zogby Interactive, not the regular Zogby Poll. The interactive polling has shown, in my opinion, to not be as reliable as his other polls.
That being said, it is a tremendous boost for Jim Webb, who has had a great string of luck (although ‘luck’ is not the same as Allen melting down) these last few weeks. It takes some breaks to win a high profile race; he has been handed more than a few. Good for him.
Note that Allen has not actually lost all that much ground in the last month. His approvals have been low for years and Rassmussen had him around 48% before the macacca thing happened. Allen has been in trouble all along with a majority of voters being very familiar with who George Allen is and deciding that they didn’t intend to vote for him. I suggest that what we’re seeing here is undecideds breaking for Webb a little sooner than they otherwise would. The macacca incident just made the race and thus Webb’s candidacy become news a month or so before the VA press would normally start to really cover the race. Allen didn’t lost votes because of the macacca thing. He actually lost them years ago. This isn’t something that a change of subject or an apology can fix. A majority of Virginians are prepared to vote for anyone who is not George Allen so long as they meet the most basic requirements for stature and experience. The only thing that can save Allen now is going hard, hard negative and making up a lot of total lies about Jim Webb’s character. It’s the only thing that can possibly bring him to 50.0001%.
I welcome this news, but I wish that more people would point out that this is Zogby Interactive, not the regular Zogby Poll. The interactive polling has shown, in my opinion, to not be as reliable as his other polls.
That being said, it is a tremendous boost for Jim Webb, who has had a great string of luck (although ‘luck’ is not the same as Allen melting down) these last few weeks. It takes some breaks to win a high profile race; he has been handed more than a few. Good for him.
Note that Allen has not actually lost all that much ground in the last month. His approvals have been low for years and Rassmussen had him around 48% before the macacca thing happened. Allen has been in trouble all along with a majority of voters being very familiar with who George Allen is and deciding that they didn’t intend to vote for him. I suggest that what we’re seeing here is undecideds breaking for Webb a little sooner than they otherwise would. The macacca incident just made the race and thus Webb’s candidacy become news a month or so before the VA press would normally start to really cover the race. Allen didn’t lost votes because of the macacca thing. He actually lost them years ago. This isn’t something that a change of subject or an apology can fix. A majority of Virginians are prepared to vote for anyone who is not George Allen so long as they meet the most basic requirements for stature and experience. The only thing that can save Allen now is going hard, hard negative and making up a lot of total lies about Jim Webb’s character. It’s the only thing that can possibly bring him to 50.0001%.