IN: Cygnal: Braun (R) +3

[ContrarianLibertarian]

I mean, Cygnal wants us to believe Kaine is only leading Stewart by 5.

If the best they can do is Braun+3 in Indiana, then I'm not worried.  They can't get Braun out of the toss-up range.  But I do love how everyone runs in here to go "ah-ha, Donnelly was going to lose all along!" based on this.  Toss-up race is a toss-up.

FWIW, the polls leading up to the 2016 Indiana Senate election showed a consistent Bayh lead until the last couple weeks....then, right at the last part of the homestretch, a small lead for Todd Young.

Young went on to win by almost 10 points.

I don't know if that experience will be instructive here or not.  This is a different cycle with different prevailing political winds.  But it should, anyway, be enough to make people skeptical of the polls.  And I'm not just talking about Cygnal.  Marist was in that group and I think Q was, too.

[ContrarianLibertarian]

I mean, Cygnal wants us to believe Kaine is only leading Stewart by 5.

If the best they can do is Braun+3 in Indiana, then I'm not worried.  They can't get Braun out of the toss-up range.  But I do love how everyone runs in here to go "ah-ha, Donnelly was going to lose all along!" based on this.  Toss-up race is a toss-up.

FWIW, the polls leading up to the 2016 Indiana Senate election showed a consistent Bayh lead until the last couple weeks....then, right at the last part of the homestretch, a small lead for Todd Young.

Young went on to win by almost 10 points.

I don't know if that experience will be instructive here or not.  This is a different cycle with different prevailing political winds.  But it should, anyway, be enough to make people skeptical of the polls.  And I'm not just talking about Cygnal.  Marist was in that group and I think Q was, too.

Problem is we've barely gotten any reputable polls for this race in the post-Labor Day stretch of the election cycle.

Well, part of the point I was making was that even the reputable polls in Indiana pretty badly missed the 2016 result.  It may well be that undecideds broke hard for Young that cycle.  And it’s true that damaging news about Bayh came out fairly late in the campaign.  But I think it was about for over a month before Election Day.

But most of the late polls showed a slight Young lead.  The last one posted at RCP had Young up 5.  He ended up winning by 9.7.

Make of that what you will.  But I just wouldn’t put that much faith in even the most reputable pollsters.  They all missed that one badly.

[ContrarianLibertarian]

Going back and reviewing polls late in the 2016 race, there was one polling outfit that came pretty close to the final result between Young and Bayh:  Surveymonkey.

Their last 2 polls were 52-43 (Young) and 53-42 (Young).  The result was 52.1 - 42.4 Young.

[ContrarianLibertarian]

I think IN will go GOP, the state will trend right

I don't know how this particular election will turn out.  But it's certainly true that Indiana has trended right in the past decade.  Soon after the statehouse Democrats walked out and went to Illinois to prevent a quorum over objections to right-to-work legislation, the Republicans have maintained supermajorities in both houses of the legislature and nearly a monopoly on statewide offices (Donnelly is one of just two Dems to win statewide since all that happened).

What a dumb move on their part.  And, ultimately, they didn't even prevent the passage of RTW.

[ContrarianLibertarian]

What region of the state are you in?  How do things look on the ground?

Southwestern....Evansville.

Honestly, I'd say it looks relatively subdued -- at least as compared to presidential years.  I'm guessing that the area down here will go pretty well for Braun, given that he's from Jasper.  But I get the feeling that most people aren't big fans of either one of them.  The one thing I'm hearing more than anything else is that they can't wait to stop seeing the ads.

Trump did a rally here a few weeks ago for Braun that was very well attended.  Filled up the Ford Center with about 10K, with probably another 2 or 3K who didn't get in and had to watch on a huge monitor they placed outside.  Interestingly, our popular moderate Republican mayor (Lloyd Winnecke) had other plans that night. 

[ContrarianLibertarian]

BTW, speaking of Donnelly, did you see where he just stuck his foot in his mouth talking about his minority staffers?

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But?  But?

I don't think his comment will cost him many votes, honestly.  But it's things like this which make silly season so much fun.

[ContrarianLibertarian]

I'm curious if Vanderburgh will go for Donnelly like it did last time around.

I'd be surprised.

What was funny about that race was that Dick Mourdock is from here (he's an acquaintance of mine, actually).  He was never terribly popular here, but did win a County Commissioner's seat.  He was pretty good at internal party politics and basically parlayed that (after two tries) into the state party's support for Treasurer.  He was never really a populist type before (really more of a Mike Delph-type SoCon).  But, when the Tea Party stuff started happening, he gladly hopped on the wave....which he rode all the way to saying that children conceived in rape were a gift from God.  And, well, that did it.

It didn't surprise me that he lost his home county.  In fact, he might have lost here even if he hadn't have made the rape gaffe.  People here never liked him much.

That said, while Todd Young won Vanderburgh in 2016, he only won it by about 6 points...so he underperformed here what he did statewide.

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I'll have to go do some historical analysis.