A couple of weeks ago there was a Rasmussen poll which had Jack Carter withing the margin of error against John Ensign (39-46). There were a lot of people who decried this poll as an “outlier” saying you can’t trust Rasmussen polls and watch out for other polls before you believe this race is winnable. These people felt vindicated when a Mason Dixon poll came out which had Carter 20 points down (33-54).
Well, it seems the Mason Dixon poll is the outlier. A new Zogby Interactive poll published by the Wall Street Journal which was released today has Jack Carter within the margin of error as well. And the numbers here are even better than in the Rasmussen poll. Zogby has Jack Carter at 44.7% and Ensign at 48.1%. Jack Carter now is only 3.3 percentage points behind Ensign!
But there is even better news. Zogby also has Democrat Dina Titus leading Republican Jim Gibbons for the very first time in the gubernatorial contest: 46.8% – 44.1%!
If you’re not from Nevada you might wonder what happened in the last month that both Carter and Titus have such big gains in the polls. Nevada had its primary on August 15th which for the first time had a lot of people take a closer look at the candidates. Apparently the Republican incumbents didn’t fare too well in the eyes of Nevada voters as both incumbent Senator Ensign and incumbent Congressman Gibbons, now running for Governor, are down in this poll.
This is especially significant since the primaries for Governor and Senate were quite different. Titus went through a tough, bruising and sometimes nasty primary while Carter practically cruised through his having no major opponent. What both these primaries somehow still managed to achieve is that voters must have come away with a better impression of the Democrats and that both Titus’ and Carter’s name recognition probably increased significantly.
Considering that the election campaigns will start in earnest in the coming weeks, Democrats in Nevada are now very well positioned for a possibly landslide in November. There is no doubt that the pick up in the polls for these two races will also translate to the House race in CD-2 (Democrat Jill Derby vs. Republican Dean Heller) and CD-3 (Democrat Tessa Hafen vs. incumbent Republican Jon Porter).
Please consider contributing to these great candidates and help us win Nevada in a landslide. You can donate to Carter and Derby through the Turn Tahoe Blue ActBlue page and you can donate to Dina Titus here and to Tessa Hafen here.
cross posted from my local blog Turn Tahoe Blue
