We have all been following the ST-Sen race with a certain sense of baited breath. He stepped over certain lines when he started using talking points from Karl Rove, and has made it very clear that he is going to be a very independent vote in the Senate if he wins. To me that is code for continuing his Neo-Con agenda.
You have seen the latest polling, showing Lieberman up, 49-37-8. That looks like a race out of the margin of error and GOTV, but I think it will be a very close one tomorrow and possibly even a victory for Lamont, and I’ll tell you why.
Party Loyalty and Ballot Placement.
No not Democratic loyalty, Republican.
That poll showed Lieberman getting 73% of the Republican vote, with Schlesinger at 19% and Lamont at 6%. Other polls, like SUSA and Quinnipiac tell a similar story, don’t forget the Rasmussen poll which show Lamont and Schlesinger with 14% of the Republicans each. Schlesinger remains in the teens for the polls amongst Republicans and in the single digits overall. That is rather unlikely IMNSHO, especially given how well Schlesinger did in the debates.
I know that Bush has practically endorsed Lieberman, and that he sounds like so many other Republican candidates now, and the polls show him doing fine, but we don’t vote in polls we vote in the privacy of the polling booth.
I predict that when all is said and done, Lieberman will find himself with only about 65% of Republicans and, Schlesinger will poll in the low 30s. There are two reasons for this, voting history and the ballot.
Although Lieberman has recorded a Republican approval rating as high as 73% in the last few months, he was around 60% in June of 2005. Personally I think that many Republicans in the privacy of the voting booth with find it hard to vote for the Democrat they have been voting against for 18 years. In 2000 he got 63-34, and now he is counting on the 34% who voted against him to be his base.
According to the CNN exit polls, Lieberman got 100% of the Liberals, 70% of the Moderates and 2% of the Conservatives. It also says that he got 100% of the Dems, 86% of the Republicans and 9% of the Independents. These polls aren’t great data, , they show that 100% of they Jews voted for the Republican in 2000 and imply that all of the Republican votes were from Independent Conservatives.
Whatever the breakdown it is difficult to imagine that that Liebrman will be able to win over more than half of the voters who voted against him in 2000. that means that Lieberman will win at most 17% of the vote away from Schlesinger. I am predicting that Schlesinger will win at least 15% of the vote with at least 30% (8%) of the Republicans and 15% (6%) of the Independents. Or to put it another way Schlesinger wins 50% of the Conservatives (10%) and 10% of the Moderates (5%).
Even if those intrepid Republicans and Independent Conservatives are determined to vote for their formerly Democratic Senator despite 18 year of tradition, then they have to hunt him down on the ballot. Connecticut’s ballot placement rules are not in his favor, take a look at this ballot (PDF), the Republicans are the first row, the Democrats the second and poor Connecticut for Lieberman is down on row six. A fair few people will enter the booth intending to vote for Lieberman and not find him. Democrats will be reminded that he left the party, and Republicans that he isn’t one of them.
So what do I think? Amongst Dems (38%) Lamont 70, Lieberman 25, Schlesinger 3. Amongst Republicans (25%) Lieberman 60, Schlesinger 30 Lamont 10. Among Independents (38%), I’ll follow the Quinnipiac U poll and say 51 Lieberman, 36 Lamont, 6 Schlesinger.
Total
Lieberman:9.5+15+19.38=43.88%
Lamont: 26.6+2.5+13.68= 42.78%
Schlesinger: 1.14+7.5+2.28=10.92%
A statistical tie between Lieberman and Lamont. Which puts it all down to their ground game, and one final question I have. How is Lieberman finding his voters? Party ID isn’t going to be very good in this race.