Allen's campaign was apparently lulled to sleep by his past campaigns for Governor and Senator, in which not much mud was flung around. They were clearly unprepared for the organized assault which ensued after the flap over his "macaca" comment.

They have now seen the dark, ugly underbelly of the modern Democratic campaign. Allen can be thankful he survived the onslaught after being caught flat-footed, but he better be prepared next time, because this is not over.

Hate to say it, but what about that MSNBC poll that just came out tonight showing a dead heat? I know Allen F&^%Ked up with his "Maccaca" moment, but how can MSNBC be so far off? I noticed they polled mostly over a weekend, but shouldn't Alex do some research to try to call B.S. on this one?

Weekend polling tends to favor Democrats, but no one has yet figured out a way to adjust for that - or perhaps they just don't care to.

I notice something in most polls that do divulge their internals, though. For instance, one I saw today interviewed 1200 or so adults, found 1000 or so registered voters and some 650 or so likely voters. Baloney.

Registration isn't that high - only about 92% of voting-age adults are even eligible to vote when the non-citizens and disqualified felons are counted. And participation is nowhere near that high - in recent midterms it has been closer to 40% - yet, polls find 65% of registered voters are likely to vote this time? Sorry, it doesn't pass the smell test.

I don't know the details of the MSNBC poll, but I am generally dissatisfied with the screening for likely voters that all the polls are doing this year. I suspect they are being more lax about it for economic reasons: in order to get a firmly-screened sample of 650 truly "likely" voters, pollsters would have to conduct roughly 1800 interviews, fully 50% more than the above example. That means their employee costs would also rise by half to get that sample.

It's cheaper to just accept what people say, and not press them about voting habits. All that is sacrificed is accuracy, and who cares about that, anyway?

;-)

The MSNBC poll was done by Mason Dixon which is supposedly the best polling company in the country.
http://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=46093.0