* From a Joe Walsh press release…
With less than four weeks until Election Day, Joe Walsh is in the lead over Tammy Duckworth in the race for Congress in Illinois’ 8th District by 1.5% according to a flash poll taken Tuesday, October 9th. The poll was commissioned by ChampionNews.net.
The poll showed Walsh with 47.4% of the vote to Duckworth’s 45.9%, with only 6.7% undecided. This while Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney in the 8th District by 4.6%: 49% to 44.4%. Walsh’s lead stems mainly from his huge advantage amongst independents, where he leads Duckworth by 10% (51% - 41%). Walsh has a 12% lead among male voters and trails by only 3% among female voters. […]
The automated poll was conducted by We Ask America on Tuesday, October 9th. 1,171 responses were collected, resulting in a margin of error of 2.9%. The full poll summary report can be viewed here.
Keep in mind when reading the internals that We Ask America gives unweighted numbers on its crosstabs. So, while you’ll see that slightly more Republicans than Democrats were interviewed, that’s not how the numbers end up when the final weighting is done.
Also, yes, Jack Roeser paid for this poll. But I’ve been using WAA for a few years now and I’m going to be using them a whole lot more in the coming year (stay tuned for an official announcement), and they do good work. They were the only outfit that caught Bill Brady’s late 2010 primary surge, for instance. And their legislative polling in the primary was quite good.
Just about every time I post a poll, commenters’ tinfoil hats come out in abundance. This is legit. Deal with it.
* Here’s what WAA has to say about its latest poll of the Virginia Senate race…
Any time our numbers go that much against the grain of conventional wisdom, you can bet on us re-visting the race soon. But we decided to publish the results because there’s something interesting going on in Virginia and other states. There is a significant percentage of voters who are shifting their self-described political party affiliation; we refer to them as lane changers. People who are strict party loyalists sometimes find it disconcerting that affiliations can shift like this. In truth, its probably more accurate to simply call these lane changers Independents, but we’ve seen a lot of it lately, and that may why so many are wringing their hands about pollsters’ mix of GOP/Dem/Ind in their polls.
In our opinion, those who try to shape their samples based on the 2008 presidential mix are missing the boat. While digging into the reasons our numbers are different–and out of curiosity–we weighted the raw numbers out of Virginia based on that 2008 presidential ratio. Lo and behold…it moves Kaine AHEAD by four points, about the same lead the the Real Clear Politics average is showing in this race. That doesn’t mean that other pollsters are using the wrong mix, but it makes us wonder.
* Meanwhile, allegations made by Walsh against Duckworth during this week’s debate has drawn some media attention…
As the head of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs, congressional candidate Tammy Duckworth is accused of firing an employee after the woman filed a complaint against her supervisor.
Duckworth allegedly told the woman: “If you do your job and keep your mouth shut and concentrate on job duties, you will keep your job,” according to a lawsuit pending in a Downstate court. The Illinois Attorney General’s office, which is defending Duckworth, has filed a request to again dismiss the lawsuit.
The original complaint was dismissed from federal court but was again filed in state court, now being handled out of the First Judicial District in Union County. The initial attorney who handled the case for the whistleblower said it was dismissed because of “jurisdictional issues.”
It was Duckworth’s opponent, Joe Walsh, a Tea Party Republican, who flagged the lawsuit in front of more than 1,000 people in a Tuesday night debate in Rolling Meadows. Walsh did it to many “boos” in the raucous audience, but made it known that Duckworth, a Democrat, had a December pending court date.
The disclosure caused a stern retort from Duckworth campaign manager Kaitlin Fahey, who called Walsh a “financially irresponsible deadbeat.”
* But…
A look at the lawsuit reveals it’s not classified as a wrongful termination suit. The complaint is about allegations that Duckworth and a colleague violated the state’s ethics act and inflicted intentional emotional distress. And the two workers still have their jobs.
* And I’m not sure I agree with this lede…
Turns out, U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh probably would have won the bet.
Democrat Tammy Duckworth didn’t take the Republican congressman up on a wager he laid out at their Tuesday night debate — but if she had, it sounds like she would have lost.
The proposed bet involved Chicago Prime Steakhouse in Schaumburg.
Walsh insisted that the restaurant owner was concerned about how Obamacare affected his business.
Duckworth said she also had talked to the restaurant owner and had heard a different story. She accused Walsh of talking too much and not listening.
I’m pretty sure Walsh said the company would be bankrupted by Obamacare. Duckworth said the company would have to lay off a few employees to get it under the 50-worker cap to avoid having to provide health insurance. Here’s the restaurant’s full response…
So that we do not have to respond individually to the high volume of reporters who have contacted us in the last 24 hours, we thought we would just respond with the following statements.
First, we would like to thank both Tammy Duckworth and Joe Walsh for attending and mentioning our round table discussions held at our restaurant, Chicago Prime Steakhouse in Schaumburg, Il, last evening during their spirited debate. My father George Kalkounos and I appreciate your friendship, and both of you along with all of your supporters are always welcome to our restaurant.
Allow me to preface my comments by sharing that I do not have a political axe to grind. I am not speaking as a partisan, I am simply speaking a businessman, and concerned citizen who has a business to protect, a wonderful family to provide for and a hard-working staff to answer to.
The idea of health benefits for employees is a significant consideration that we take seriously. Based purely as a business owner, the AHCA would impose a significant added expense without contributing any added revenue. Plainly speaking the Affordable Health Care Act, as I understand it to be written, is NOT affordable to this small business.
The math is simple, these new rules are creating costs for businesses like our own who already struggle in this economy and we have to treat it as any other expense and attempt to curtail it as much as possible.
I can say that I am assuaged by the fact that both Ms. Duckworth and Mr. Walsh agree that our restaurant will suffer under the new changes implemented by the AHCA and they both want to do something about it. It is of great concern that government is imposing a penalty on businesses that may not be able to afford health care. It burdens entrepreneurs like us that take the risk of leveraging assets and sacrifice time away from their families to create, open and operate a successful business in today’s climate. The AHCA as written goes against supporting our business growth.
As it relates to AHCA, you ask me if my business is better off before it or after, the answer is obviously before. Both candidates agree with this and I am hopeful that this specific issue gets resolved immediately.
