Allen Boyd losing BIG again GOP frontrunner(FL-02) (Internal R poll - Tarrance)

[Lunar]

Internal poll?  Who is tarence group?

[Lunar]

Internal poll?  Who is tarence group?

The Tarrance Group is one of the best known national pollsters for the GOP. They are also known for their long-running partnership with Dem pollsters Lake Research to create the Battleground Polls.

Any possibility of something fishy going on, like letting the voters know before they answer on Boyd, how Boyd voted on HCR?

(I spelled that pretty badly, I was on my phone)

[Lunar]

Just fyi on another point - Edwards has kinda refused to release his own polls, which suggests that he recognizes there is truth in what is being sai.

Indeed.  There's no reason for a campaign to release a competing internal poll showing things are competitive unless the media is buying into the narrative set by your opponent's internal polls.

Things are really bad when you're releasing internal polls showing you only a point or two ahead, or even worse, your own internal polls show you losing (remember Dodd doing that?).

[Lunar]

Is this one of those "informed ballot" polls?  

I doubt it, since Tarrance is a respectable pollster. (I can't rule it out entirely—they clearly asked issue-related questions, but it appears they were done after the head-to-head.)

FWIW, Tarrance also did a generic ballot question, and voters preferred a generic Republican 48% to 35% over a generic Democrat in this district.

Look, even respectable pollster can do crappy polls if the client requests it.  Did you see Silver & Blumenthal tearing into the latest R2k poll done for DFA?

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/dfa_survey_priming_the_vote_in.php

Boyd may lose, but I refuse to believe that he'll do worse than Obama did in that district.

[Lunar]

Since when was Research 2000 a respected pollster?

I think they are.  They're clearly not a joke pollster, and they have a very high prominence.  Certainly not the same as Gallup, but the point is that if the client (in this case, the NRCC, the opposite of an unbiased sourced) asks that the questions be asked in a certain order, then they will be.

Anyway, the results are fairly suspect.