| According to a poll just released by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic candidate Ashwin Madia is leading Republican Erik Paulsen by five points, 44-39.
Independence Party candidate David Dillon received the support of 8 percent of respondents, while "undecided" got 9 percent.
Key points: The survey was conducted September 29 - 30 and has a 4.9 percent margin of error.
In the survey, 82 percent of respondents said that the country is "off on the wrong track" and when asked who would "take us in a new direction," Ashwin Madia led 40 - 16 percent over Paulsen. The DCCC would not immediately release any of the underlying data, unfortunately. However, a statistically significant lead like this represents great growth for the Madia campaign, and puts Paulsen's immediate shift to all-attack-ads-all-the-gosh-darned-time campaigning in perspective. My suspicion is that the Paulsen campaign's internal numbers reflect this poll's results, and they recognized a couple of weeks ago that going on the attack was their only viable route to victory.
Madia, on the other hand, has remained generally positive on his own account (the D-trip's attack ads against Paulsen and a punch-back response to Paulsen's attack notwithstanding) and is building a winning machine with support from Sen. Russ Feingold this past weekend, U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) tonight and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) tomorrow -- not to mention the many committed volunteers making the whole thing happen on the ground.
/cheer |
