CA-50: Busby Surging--Can She Win It Without a Run-off?

Anyone can volunteer for Francine Busby, no matter where you live. Send an email to volunteer@busbyforcongress.com in order to phone bank for Francine--Chris

Survey USA has a new poll on the April 11th CA-50 special election to replace convicted felon and Republican Duke Cunningham. As I am sue you already know, the main Democrat in the race is ,Francine Busby (volunteer, contribute). Even though this is a red district with only 43.4% Democratic performance, it is suddenly looking possible that Francine can win this thing without a run-off:
800 registered voters from California's 50th Congressional District, identified using Registration Based Sample from Aristotle International, were interviewed 3/25/06 - 3/27/06. Of them, 404 were judged to be "likely voters". Crosstabs reflect Likely Special Primary voters. Margin of Sampling Error for this question = ± 5%

Busby: 45%
Others: 52%
Unsure: 3%
Francine is now within the margin of error for winning the race without a special election. None of her rivals tops 14%, so even without a run-off she is clearly the favorite to win this thing if there is a run-off on June 6th.

I know we are all dying for a victory, so let's bring this one home. I would love to win this thing without the need for a run-off.

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Update: Howard Kaloogian, who was second behind Francine Busby in today's Survey USA poll with 14%, has been caught in the act of fabricating the location of a photograph on his website. He claimed, on his website, that he took the photo in Baghdad. Turns out that the photo is was taken in suburban Turkey. It is good to see that Republicans have lined up candidates with high ethical standards in order to replace a convicted felon. And to think that this guy probably accuses the media of distorting the situation in Iraq.

Update 2: Kos writes that "It's important to temper this poll with the fact that Busby's own internal numbers don't show the numbers that high (she pegs her support at 39 percent)." That is not entirely true. The real difference between Busby's support in this Survey USA poll and previous polls on the race can be found in the number of "undecided" voters in each poll. For example, in her internal numbers. Lake puts Busby at 39%, but with 19% of voters undecided. It certainly isn't difficult to imagine that if undecideds were pushed in the Lake poll, that Busby would rise into the mid-40's. Survey USA clearly pushed undecideds, which almost certainly accounts for her seemingly high 45%. The truth is that right now Busby is probably in the mid-forties when undecideds are pushed. However, turnout models for special elections are notoriously difficult to predict, and thus it is possible that none of this polling is very accurate.



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Not in the district? (none / 0)

Volunteer from home!  Moveon is trying out their new phone-banking system, so anyone at all can make phonecalls for Francine Busby from home.  Go check it out and make some calls!


Rudy Giuliani hates firefighters. And puppies.
by Fran for Dean on Wed Mar 29, 2006 at 01:41:31 PM EST

Re: CA-50: Busby Surging.... (none / 0)

Gotta hope this isn't an outlier poll because the "Indycrat" model for taking an (R) district like this jumps right out at you from the crosstabs:

Among Dems Busby picks up 85%.  Expected.
Among Reeps, Busby picks up 10%.  Better than avg.
Among Indys, Busby picks up 49%.  The nail in the (R) coffin.

This is a perfect storm district of Republican corruption mixed with a good local candidate who's not afraid to step up and say, "I'm a Democrat, and what Democrats believe is right for America".  If we're to replicate this potential success around the country, we need every Democrat to say the foregoing phrase to themselves over and over again and, more importantly, to actually believe it.


by sfyoungdem on Wed Mar 29, 2006 at 01:50:51 PM EST

Drop Out (none / 0)

Are there other dems that could do the brave thing and drop out, tell their followers to fight for Busby, etc?


BlueNC - Progressive NC Politics
by Robert P on Wed Mar 29, 2006 at 01:59:29 PM EST

Re: Drop Out (none / 0)

Busby is the only Dem running in this race.  There are about 4000 Republicans running


Rudy Giuliani hates firefighters. And puppies.
by Fran for Dean on Wed Mar 29, 2006 at 02:04:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Drop Out (none / 0)

There is one Dem--Chris Young.  She's polling at 1%.  So, she's a non-factor.

(I think it's a she?  Maybe it's a he, actually...)


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by HellofaSandwich on Wed Mar 29, 2006 at 02:41:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Drop Out (none / 0)

In this race, 1% could mean a lot.  She should have a big ta-doo, drop out, put her name behind Busby and give her some free press a week out.


BlueNC - Progressive NC Politics
by Robert P on Wed Mar 29, 2006 at 02:59:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Drop Out (none / 0)

Woops, I didn't know there was another Dem in the running.


Rudy Giuliani hates firefighters. And puppies.
by Fran for Dean on Wed Mar 29, 2006 at 03:44:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Drop Out (none / 0)

Chris Young is the ONLY other woman on this massive candidate ballot.  Just by virtue of being a female, in many instances, she should be able to attract as much as 5-7% of the vote.  I think that the large number of candidates diminishes that phenomenon, and I just realized that the androgynous sound of her name may mask her gender for voters.  But I think it also is a reflection of the successful work of the Busby campaign to educate their base and the public that Busby is the only viable Dem choice in this race.

I live in San Diego, so I remember the news article about Young's candidacy announcement and campaign kickoff.  Before she actually gave her statement, according to the article, local grassroots Dems begged her at the location to not run.  Her reply was, the voters deserve a choice.  True, they do,... and apparently she ain't it!

Will she drop out?  No.  So just move on and work around her.


by Phonatic on Thu Mar 30, 2006 at 02:56:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Distorting (none / 0)

It's not just probably, Chris -- the point of posting that picture was to counteract the terrorist-loving media's claims that things aren't going well in Iraq.  From the caption:
We took this photo of dowtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism.

by Daniel Biss on Wed Mar 29, 2006 at 02:41:51 PM EST

Re: CA-50: Busby Surging--Can She Win It Without a (none / 0)

Wow. That came out of nowhere. But beware the internals of this poll. It has only an 8 point margin between Repubs and Dems (46-38-16). The registration margin is 14 (44-30-26). The underperformance by independents is normal. But the very high Dem number is eye-opening. It's possible there are more self-identified Dems now than before, for whatever reason, or it's possible the poll is oversampling them. We shall see!


by ColoDem on Wed Mar 29, 2006 at 02:52:10 PM EST

Re: CA-50: Busby Surging--Can She Win It Without a (none / 0)

Like I said, turnout models are difficult to predict. We'll see the reality soon enough.
by Chris Bowers on Wed Mar 29, 2006 at 03:40:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: CA-50: Busby Surging--Can She Win It Without a (none / 0)

The voter registration numbers in this District are horrible for Dems.  The local Dems would have done everybody a favor if they had focused for the last year on an intensive registration campaign.  Is anyone listening/reading at the San Diego County Democratic Party?  Hel-loooo!  Oh well, it didn't happen.

But the good news is that Dem candidates have demonstrated before that this area can be competitive.  Forget measuring Democratic performance by Kerry's numbers in 2004.  Or else use them as a floor for potential performance.  Look at the numbers for Feinstein's performance in 2000 and Boxer's performance in 2004.  Feinstein did very well (mid- to upper-50s as I recall).  True, some Republicans like her.  But they don't like Boxer!  And Boxer lost this district by only 1000 votes!!  I live in San Diego, and I know first-hand that Dems at either the state or local level (except for Busby!) just don't work this district.  Boxer's numbers (I believe, she got them without trying) are what all of us should be looking at to remind us that this race is winnable!!!


by Phonatic on Thu Mar 30, 2006 at 03:21:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: CA-50: Busby Surging--Can She Win It Without a (none / 0)

Some people are suggesting that we should wait until after this election to start hammering on this because Kaloogian would be a better target in the runoff, but that seems to presume that there's a set number of voters in the special election.  Seems to me that there's hardly a guarantee that all of his supporters would simply show up and vote for someone else.  In an election like this, it could take something this relatively small to discourage people to not show up.

If just half of Kaloogian's supporters from that poll stayed home, Busby's already up to 48% and pretty much just needs the undecideds to swing her way.


by Lucas O'Connor on Wed Mar 29, 2006 at 05:32:06 PM EST

Re: CA-50: Busby Surging--Can She Win It (none / 0)

Raw Story has an article up on some corruption on a sewer treatment plant. Seems Bilbray - another R candidate running for Cunningham's seat - is involved...

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Whistl eblowers_allege_influence_peddling_by_me mbers_0329.html

hmm...!


by OldCoastie on Wed Mar 29, 2006 at 08:38:11 PM EST


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