AK-NYT/Siena: Sullivan +8 | Young +8

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

This doesn't invalidate other polling. Still toss-up

[Pollster]

I know it's become a running joke on this board to criticize the NYT/Siena polls for not pushing undecideds, but the joke is really masking over the fact that it does make the poll quite useless, and in all likelihood, wrong. And because of the pulpit of the NYTimes, these bad polls are getting a lot of exposure and factoring into narratives.

Nate Cohn is a polling reporter, not a pollster, for good reason.

8% are undecided in this poll. I don't get why people are acting like it's 20% lol.

Most of those undecideds lean a certain way, which would be clearer if they were properly pushed. It would be more understandable in a race where the candidates were unknown, but Gross and Sullivan both have 80-90% name rec in this poll, and Biden and Trump are both at 95+%. It would be more understandable in a quiet race at the beginning of the year, but this is an expensive contest less than three weeks away from the end of the election.

8% implies nearly 1 in 10 in voters is undecided. In reality, it's probably closer to 1 in 30ish.

[new_patomic]

It's not just 8 percent being undecided, it's another 10 percent supporting an AIP candidate no one has heard of and who apparently doesn't have any money.

Which, who knows, could be the case. Alaska does have some history of splitting their vote in fun/weird ways. But in a race with a well-known Democrat and Republican who both have a lot of money and high name recognition? We'll see.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

AIP at 10?

This is odd for reasons alluded to earlier in this thread, the AIP primary being pretty small this year and the party tending to do much worse than this in statewide elections. It also doesn't square with Sullivan +8% given that they take disproportionately from Republicans (I try to not to put too much stock in crosstabs, but Howe is taking 10% of Democrats and 4% of Republicans here).

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

To put this in perspective - I've just checked - this would be the best federal performance ever for the AIP since their founding in 1984, followed by Michael States' 6% showing in the 1992 House race. They got 39% in the 1990 gubernatorial election and 20% in the '94 gubernatorial election, but seem to have completely crumbled since.

[GALeftist]

I'm sorry, there is no necking way that the AIP gets 10%. Frankly, it would be fortunate to crack 5%. Why are all these Siena polls so janky?

[new_patomic]

To put this in perspective - I've just checked - this would be the best federal performance ever for the AIP since their founding in 1984, followed by Michael States' 6% showing in the 1992 House race. They got 39% in the 1990 gubernatorial election and 20% in the '94 gubernatorial election, but seem to have completely crumbled since.

If you expanded that and looked at independents in general, one did get over 10 percent in 2016. Though that was the Murkowski race against Miller who was running as a Libertarian with the Democrats running a non-entity who came in fourth. So not a good 1 = 1 comparison.

The Green Party also seemed to get some better results in 1992/1998/2002 but those were all non-competitive races.

In competitive races where both the Democrats and Republicans are running serious candidates, the trend seems to be they get somewhere around ~90 percent or more combined. So this would be... odd.

[Astatine]

I have a hard time not junking a poll in which a random Libertarian professor is supposed to improve on the presidential performance of the former Governor of New Mexico who ran in a year which was much more favorable towards third parties.

[Progressive Pessimist]

I'm so glad that I had absolutely no expectations for this state. Let's just be grateful that we have the Montana and Kansas Senate elections in competitive territory.

[wbrocks67]

Call me a hack but I call BS on this. Siena/NYT has had a tough time it appears in states they don't normally poll.

[Lief 🗽]

New Poll: Alaska Senator by Siena Research Institute on 2020-10-114

Summary: D: 0%, R: 45%, U: 18%

Poll Source URL: Full Poll Details