In advance of the 2006 elections, an important new site,
Pollster.com, has just launched. It is a joint project of two of my favorite bloggers, Mark Blumenthal of Mystery Pollster and Charles Franklin of
Political Arthmetik. By combining forces, these two blogs now appear to have instantly created the best polling website anywhere.
Among other goodies, they have five-poll and ten-poll average for eleven key Senate races right now. I will be incorporating these averages, with proper links, of course, into my Senate forecasts. Here are the five-poll moving averages each of the eleven states (click on the links to see the individual polls used and the long-term trends):
- Washington: Cantwell 51, McGavick 40
- Pennsylvania: Casey 49, Santorum 40
- Minnesota: Klobuchar 49, Kennedy 40
- Ohio: Brown 46, DeWine 40
- Montana: Tester 47, Burns 44
- New Jersey: Menendez 43, Kean 40
- Rhode Island: Whitehouse 42, Chafee 40
- Missouri: Talent 47, McCaskill 45
- Tennessee: Corker 46, Ford 42
- Virginia: Allen 48, Webb 42
- Arizona: Kyl 48, Pederson 37
These averages do not yet include
the new polls from Gallup, nor do they include data from Maryland. However, they serve as an excellent snapshot of polling on Senate races this summer. Clearly, from this snapshot one can see that Democrats are doing pretty darn well. Ohio has clearly moved to "lean Dem" territory, and both Tennessee and Virginia clearly seem to be in play.
Anyway, I can't say enough good things about this site. I imagine I will be checking it obsessively, several times a day between now and November 7th. It never ceases to amaze me how small, boutique sites such as Pollster.com provide far better information on elections in America than do large, establishment outlets. If small websites operated by two or three people can provide far better information on American elections than organizations with hundreds of employees such as CNN, what on earth are those large outlets spending their money on?
Man, I love the blogosphere.