Friday, November 03, 2006

the final local polls show tight races, except Sheriff

Democratic candidate for SLCo Sheriff Dave Winder, who message got some amazingly great news from the Salt Lake Tribune:
Winder, who trailed the sheriff by 30 percentage points one month ago, is favored by 51 percent of county voters compared to 34 percent for Kennard. Fifteen percent are undecided.
...
Winder, a longtime deputy in the sheriff's office, who contends Kennard is out of touch after 16 years on the job.
"Wow," he said about the 17-point advantage in the poll. "Needless to say, I'm very encouraged." The sheriff's race turned personal after stories broke chronicling Kennard's weekday golf habit, according to tallies of the days he plays 18-hole rounds and his scores, which are posted on the Utah Golf Association Web site. Kennard took offense at Winder's suggestion that golf interfered with his job performance, noting he always is available by cell phone, pager or radio and has been called off the course for emergencies.

Winder's slogan? "It's time for a change." Change seems to be the winning message this year all around the country, will it hurt Sim Gill and Jim Bradley, or is this just a pro-Democratic year?
Republican Lohra Miller holds a narrow edge, 36 to 34 percent over Democrat Sim Gill - a statistical dead heat. The poll shows a substantial amount - 26 percent - still are undecided in the election to replace retiring D.A. David Yocom.
In the County Council at-large contest, Democratic incumbent Jim Bradley leads Republican challenger Janice Auger 37 percent to 32 percent, with 27 percent undecided.
The poll, conducted Oct. 30 through Nov. 1 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, surveyed 470 voters and has a 4.5 percent margin of error.

Now the race for DA has been tight the whole time, but Bradley had been up by a lot in the September Deseret News/Dan Jones poll. But maybe that is because Auger's "Don't let the 'Grandmother look' fool you." slogan received national attention via TIME magazine.

Mason-Dixon is a pretty reputable polling outfit, and I am glad that the Trib abandoned their previous polling firm that stunk. To me, no body gets Utah polling better than Dan Jones, but this poll is far my recent than the last Dan Jones poll. However, there may be another DJ poll in the field that will come out on Sunday...that is usually what happens. Then there is 48 hours to turns things around for the party that is behind and really Get Out The Vote.

Nevertheless, it remains to be seen if this purported Democratic wave actually does show up and make Tuesday (and early morning Wednesday) happy times for me. I really get too emotionally involved in politics. I remember how depressed I was for about a week after Kerry lost in 2004. Sure I am a partisan, but I am happy even if Democrats lose if at least turn out stays as high as it did in 2004.

No comments: