No Runny Eggs

In the last 5 days, 3 entities have released polls on the governor’s race (listed in order of dates taken, hat-tips to Kevin and Peter for finding these first):

• August 10 – Rasmussen – Doyle 49%, Green 41% (Doyle gained 2 points since the July Rasmussen poll, Green held steady, and the 3-month rolling average remained Doyle +6%). Rasmussen notes a certain lack of “loyalty” for Green among Pubbie voters, but without a breakdown of where that lack of loyalty is, I can’t agree with Kevin’s analysis that it’s Belling telling us SE Wisconsin Stormtroopers to not vote for him. It could just as easily be SW Wisconsin RINOs thinking that Green is too much of a conservative.
• August 11-13 – Strategic Vision – Doyle 45%, Green 44% (both candidates improved 2 points since the July Strategic Vision poll, Doyle’s disapproval at 50%). Strategic Vision has always been much more favorable to the Pubbies in this race, though you can hardly consider this a conservative-friendly poll; RINOs take the top 3 spots in the straw poll for the 2008 Pubbie nomination.
• August 12-14 – Research 2000 for WISC-TV – Doyle 48%, Green 38% (no previous polls to compare to and no numbers other than what WISC decided to feed us). Most-noteworthy of those limited numbers is that 34% of the respondents had no opinion of Green.

Before Xoff and the rest of you Doylies break out the champagne, do take a couple of notes:

• All 3 of these polls were finished just before Green finally got on the TV airwaves, but after a round of Doyle TV ads and several rounds of Doylie TV ads.
• There has yet to be a major poll that puts Doyle at or above 50%.

I strongly suspect that this is the high point of the Doyle campaign, now that new polls will start reflecting the Green Team’s on-air response. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next Strategic Vision poll has Green up, with Rasmussen reducing Doyle’s lead to 4 points or less.

In short, the election will turn on what close Wisconsin elections have turned on the last several election cycles – whether the Pubbies can turn out enough enough voters to overcome the ‘Rat vote fraud (or conversely, whether the ‘Rats can manufacture enough votes to overcome the Pubbie turnout).