Scott Kraus reports, over at Pennsylvania Avenue, that a days-old poll shows LV Congressman Charlie Dent has a healthy, 26-point, lead over challenger John Callahan. "90 percent of Republicans and one out of four Democrats would vote for Dent. Dent also enjoys a 30 percent lead among independents and is known by 90 percent in the district."Callahan reportedly is pleased with his own pollling, but has apparently declined to release his numbers.
Tory Mazzola, NRCC Spokesman, poured a little salt into Callahan's wound. "If Washington Democrats still think Rahm’s hand-picked candidate John Callahan is one of their best bets, then I’ve got a ticket to sell them for Martha Coakley’s U.S. Senate swearing in ceremony. Charlie Dent is in a very strong position because Eastern Pennsylvanians know he is an independent voice fighting for jobs, limited government and less spending, while Callahan’s record speaks for itself – he’s a tax-and-spend Pelosi liberal."
41 comments:
as an independent, callahan's silence on the issues is deafening....
Hmmm...I would love to see the raw data and not just the select items they decided to release. I wonder if they figured in Mathew Benol and the primary challenge.
I'll bet Benol polls much better than Callahan vs. Dent. Callahan is not the problem.
... for Dent, that is.
Can you elaborate on this supposed "tax and spend Pelosi liberal" moniker? From what does this blowhard draw his conclusions?
Pelosi's current tab is $12,845,272,000,000.
She's earned the moniker and you need to read a newspaper.
Maybe bc Callahan has promoted several tax increases in Bethlehem, has proposed an increase in the state sales tax, and has violated city council ordinances imposing spending controls.
Well done, Anon 3:51
"Democrats To Lift Debt Ceiling By 1.8 TRILLION, Fear 2010 Backlash"
www.politico.com
Mainstream Media seems to have a problem reporting this - BUT - I hear Congress actually raised the debt ceiling to 1.9 TRILLION at the end of the day.
What's another 0.1 TRILLION ???
Ask any self-respecting Progressive Liberal.
Got Teleprompters?
They only polled 300 people in this poll. That is not a large sample for a Congressional race. City Council races poll more than 300 people.
They obviously did not poll even numbers of Democrats, Republicans and Independants/others. The top line results would be different, based on the little bit of other information they did release.
I just did a quick google check on the Toomey-Specter Rasmussen poll last week and that poll surveyed 1,000 voters for a Senate election. Seems like 300 for one Congressional area in the Commonwealth is proportionally a pretty good number. It sounds to me that 5:16 has more of a problem with the results of the poll than anything else. Its just easier to attack the form over the substance. Especially when the substance is accurate.
Anon 6:15 and Bernie, and well, whoever....
This poll is garbage. I'll work from methodology on through findings. First off, there's the size of the poll. 300 voters in a Congressional internal? A State House campaign polls 400 in their sample. While you can cite the Rasmussen polls, remember two things, a.) Rasmussen, and for that matter ANY public poll, is not as good as an internal, and a good internal would go deeper than that, and b.) You don't change the size of your sample "in proportion" to the size of the race, a ton of factors weigh into it, as you would imagine. Second off, there's the margin of error. +-6%? Seriously? Ok, so Charlie's 53% COULD be 47%, which if it said that, we'd all be writing about how horrible his numbers are (and we'd never have seen them then either.). The sample is small, and the margin of error suggests a cherry picked "universe" of voters.
Secondly, let's go to the findings. 53% for an incumbent in January is poor. The challenger's number is not relevant until the challenger's been on TV and in mailboxes, in any race. 53% are the kind of numbers you say "oh no" to. We're months away from real campaigning, so the number to watch for a while is Dent's. They aren't good. They shouldn't have released this poll for another reason, and that's the numbers for Jake Towne. This will only give him some momentum on their right. It also is suggestive of a possible primary base for Benol, which is a nightmare for them. I'm stunned the NRCC put this out.
That they are putting out polls and attacks so early is suggestive that something in their real polling is scaring them. Notice that they did not release the tabs, or any other "message testing" parts of the poll, just the top lines. That an incumbent is doing this so early suggests they see things that worry them, and want to spook out Callahan's donors.
Btw, how cookie-cutter is that NRCC guy. A little originality is cool once in a while man.
Towne had 8% in the poll. Not bad for an independent so early in the election year
Rising sun, your logic is fun to read but it is only a humerous attempt to put a positive spin on something overwhelming bad for Callahan. By your logic Sam Bennet was probably right in there until the bitter end. All the polls around the country are probably wrong too. People actually love the direction the country is going, the healthcare bill, and the Democrats.
She's earned the moniker and you need to read a newspaper.
Your quip may have been relevant if you had even attempted to paint Callahan as a "tax and spend liberal."
The label is comical and tells a lot about someone simple-minded enough to use it as a blanket attack.
ironpigpen - Do you and your buddy from 3:51 have ANY idea what is/was being spent on elective wars in the Middle East? Got WMD, genius?
Your quip may have been relevant if you had even attempted to paint Callahan as a "tax and spend liberal."
The spending performance of the Democrats since 2006 shows they're untrustworthy.
.
Moderate Democrats are expected to toe the line or else. The only way to end it is to vote all Democrats out and then relentlessly hammer the Republicans over spending.
Looking to escape:
It appears that you already have escaped from Reality. george Bush and the republicans gave us two wars and a bank bailout that put us trillions in debt. Yea, please, let's elect some more of those guys!!!!!!!!!
Dent's an independent voice??? Are you serious... The only voice he has is the one that follows his party and says No to everything.
Will he beat callahan..Probably this time around..Does he deserve to beat anyone for his pathetic obstructionism???NO!!
Rising Sun- The poll speaks for itself, whereas you only speak for Nancy Pelosi, John Callahan, Moveon.org, and other liberals. Maybe you guys can go back to drawing board and come up with some new talking points? Just an idea. The ones you're using (and which were used in Mass.) just don't work, man.
And maybe take another picture of yourself in the mirror? The quality of your camera phone isn't too great, man. Tool.
Oopsie .....................Daisy
Villa, you need help. Now. It's just sad.
Bernie, your blog often comes across as an extension of Rep. Dent's campaign in trying to get Callahan to take positions (though it IS now election year, so fair game compared to when you started last year)......However, straight from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's memo I saw on the Google news homepage today: "advising Democratic campaign managers to define their Republican opponents early and to highlight the differences"...seems like Dent's beat them to the bunch on that one !!
The spending performance of the Democrats since 2006 shows they're untrustworthy.
...because we had no outrageous deficits before the Dems took the Congress back. Keep telling yourself that. How conveniently we forget the unfunded wars that have ravaged this country's budget. That is necessary spending but stimulus at home is outrageous. No matter what this President does or does not do will never be good enough. Just blame the party, watch Fox, and react like a precocious child.
Untrustworthy?
Minimum wage, credit card accountability, ChiP, Lilly Ledbetterm economic stimulus...yes, quite nefarious legislation.
Imagine if the 50% of the country who identify themselves as moderate or liberal decided to oppose the President after 9/11, a time of crisis, the way the Republicans are rallying against this President in THIS crisis. Dare say it seems rather unpatriotic.
"Dare say it seems rather unpatriotic."
Dissent is the essence of democracy.
Congressional Quarterly: Obama's Winning Streak On Hill Unprecedented
In his first year in office, President Obama did better even than legendary arm-twister Lyndon Johnson in winning congressional votes on issues where he took a position, a Congressional Quarterly study finds.
"Bernie, your blog often comes across as an extension of Rep. Dent's campaign"
No question that I like Dent. Frankly, I think he belongs in the U.S. Senate. So Lighthouse, at least you know where I stand. I won't pretend.
I've deleted an OT rant, aimed at Stoffa, intermixed with accusations that I'm on the take.
Anons 7:11 and 9:04,
Guys you are injecting politics into a critique of a poll. Had a Democratic pollster and campaign released the EXACT same poll, I'd be equally as damning on it. Their are method problems with it that call the entire thing into question, and I think it's a dummy poll being put up by the campaign. IF I'm as wrong as you say, why didn't they release more of it? Shouldn't that make you wonder?
As for saying I thought Bennett was in it, that's laughable- I never thought she could win, even without a poll. I also recall most polls showing Brown would win, and by about the margin he did win by in the end, so I don't know which polls you say didn't capture the results?
Again, I stand by my critique. There are serious, serious red flags on this poll. Obama that far in the negative? In a bell-weather district? No national poll in the last 15 days has put him below 47%, and that was Rasmussen, but we should believe he's 41% in the Lehigh Valley? C'mon, be a fair observer for a moment.
You deleted a post about the value of dissent. I think the point has been made.
Sure, you value dissent.
Burn,
I'm being very serious here. I read your blog regularly, and have always enjoyed your take on the issues and the Pols. You are inventive, funny and honest, even as to your own biases.
Please take a long hard look at what you're doing on behalf of Dent. Your anti-Callahan jihad is over the top, and it's really becoming tired. It also reflects none of the good qualities that made this blog great.
"The Tarrance Group polled 300 out of the estimated 818,000 people that live in PA-15. For those of you keeping track at home, that's less than 0.04% of the district. So, roughly, based on their numbers, they found 159 people who support Dent (0.02% of PA-15) as opposed to 81 people who support Callahan (0.01% of PA-15).
A 300-person sample size is not outrageously small for a congressional poll, but it certainly is not practical if you want to be reliable. The sample size could also potentially be part of the reason as to why this poll has such a substantially large margin of error, at +/- 6%.
Secondly, they won't release their internals. For those of you that don't following polling too closely, internals are all of the breakdowns of how and hopefully why the pollster got the responses they did"
...Dent had no choice but to draft the Tanning Bed Cancer Control Act, which would regulate the amount of UV rays emitted by tanning beds and the amount of time people can spend in them.
Hopefully this Act indicates a new willingness by the Congressman to take empirical evidence into account before making important decisions on regulatory policy.
Objective economic reality (or basic fairness) did not interfere with Dent's decision to oppose a tax on the nation's very largest banks to recoup the TARP funds spent bailing them out, despite widespread support for the tax, even among conservative economists like Greg Mankiw, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President George W. Bush.
"Your anti-Callahan jihad is over the top, and it's really becoming tired. It also reflects none of the good qualities that made this blog great."
Let me get this straight. Dent publishes a poll showing he has a 53, 27 lead over JC. It is published at Pennsylvania Ave, I publish it as well, along with a statement subsequently issued by the NRCC.
Should I have ignored it? Why? Because the facts placed Callahan in a poor light? Because they put Dent in a good light?
Just goes to show how weak a candidate JC is.
If you want someone to force the folks at BAM in the Sands to stay open later than normal so you can eat a burger just b/c you are Mayor, then JC is your guy. He throws his weight around regularly at the Sands Casino, much to the dismay of the poor employees.
Even though Charlie's a goofball for the tanning bed nonsense, the TARP tax is a meaningless populist charade. It simply foists another tax on all of us in an effort to get unpopular Ds out of the doghouse for bailing out banking contributors in the first place. Same with the pin-prick of a budget freeze announced yesterday. Empty populism. Polls indicate nobody's buying.
Dent typically has run nasty, vicious political campaigns while cultivating his down home shucks call me charlie moderate republican credentials. He had no value while Republicans were in the majority and less so even now. By the way, what is his view on term limits? Let me guess, send me one more time so I can save the American way of life from the socialist menace. Oh and that trillion dollar plus war during the Texas moron's reign where was he then?
Where does Callahan stand on Health Care? crickets.....
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