The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Is Majority Watch full of crazy talk?  That seems to be the theme of some postings here and on other blogs.  While keeping in mind that old chestnut "the only poll that matters is on election day", let's look how Majority Watch polls stack up in 8 9 other contested districts with multiple recent polls.

It looks like there are three four districts where Majority Watch is in the ballpark:

• IL-06:  MW calls it Duckworth (D) by 5.  Other recent polls are tied or Duckworth by 5.
• MN-06:  This is the Wetterling race, the mother of an abducted child who gave the Democrats' radio address on the first weekend of the Foley scandal.  Polls taken early in the month show Bachmann (R) by 3.  The MW poll taken on 10/12 shows Wetterling by 5.  A newspaper poll taken 10/16 shows Wetterling by 8.
• NM-01:  In this heavily polled race, both MW polls are squarely in the middle of the other polls.
• WA-08: MW is within a couple of points of a recent SurveyUSA poll, and both show Reichert (R) with a slim lead.

Here are races that have only partisan comparison polling, but MW seems reasonable:

• CT-05:  MW has Johnson (R) by 6.  The other polls are all partisan, with the Republican poll showing the Republican by 10, and the Democratic poll showing the Democrat by 1 or by 5.
• FL-13:  The Democratic poll has Jennings (D) up by 8 last month and 12 this month.  MW has him up by 3 last week.

Here are some districts where MW may be an outlier:

• CO-07:  MW has it as a tie.  Other recent surveys have Perlmutter (D) up by 6 or 11.
• NY-20:  Gillibrand's (D) own poll has her up by 1.  MW's, taken two days later, has her up by 13.
• NY-26:  MW's Davis (D) by 16 is the widest margin so far, even though Zogby's poll taken at about the same time has Davis by 15.

Other than NY-20, I don't see a poll where Majority Watch looks way out of sync with the rest of the professional pollsters.  But, as with the first poll in this post, I recommend that all readers who are interested in polls read the excellent analysis at pollster.com, which makes it clear that polling in House races is far less accurate than Presidential race polling.

(Update:  Forgot WA-08)