You’d be forgiven for getting a case of whiplash trying to follow the Republican nomination race for the U.S. Senate election this fall, with all of the unexpected twists and turns, the latest of these being polls at great odds with each other and an incumbent begging for a selective debate.
Earlier this month, GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy made demands of Republican Rep. Julia Letlow, who is challenging him, to square off against him, but only him, in a televised debate. To date, her response has been she’s busy with other commitments when he proposes to do it.
This runs against type for two reasons. First, Cassidy made no mention of inviting GOP Treas. John Fleming, another challenger who according to an independent poll last month leads the pack at 34 percent, up almost double-digits on Letlow and 15 points clear of Cassidy. Any debate organizer cannot leave out a major candidate like Fleming, unless he declined an invitation.
Second, atypically does an incumbent ask for debates with anybody. Incumbents don’t wish to signal their opponents have equal status with them by appearing together, especially in a party primary. Debates in fact are considered risky for an incumbent, because they open themselves up to unforced gaffes in an environment they cannot control, and gaffes often are viewed as the great equalizer in allowing an opponent to close in on support.
Except in this instance, the incumbent is in trouble, according to that poll. Thus, Cassidy needs as many televised debates as he can gather to hope these factors work in his favor. Plans are afoot by media outlets to have more before the May 16 election.
Although, according to the Cassidy campaign, he’s not in trouble of missing a runoff nomination election. Last week, a poll issued by his campaign – in other words, conducted two weeks or so after the independent one – basically argues to flip the script. In this one, Cassidy picked up 15 percent while Letlow remained about the same quarter of the vote and Fleming fell 14 points.
They can’t both be right. Opinion doesn’t change that dramatically in just two weeks and, given the independent poll released a raft of internal data that showed widespread dissatisfaction with Cassidy among Republicans and the small proportion of unaffiliated voters that the firm predicts will show up at the polls, it seems hard to believe Cassidy will have made such a turnaround so quickly.
Unfortunately, the campaign poll only released those topline numbers. There’s no sample information and frame – such as proportion of Republicans/unaffiliated, landline/mobile/online contact, and demographics – and, adding more obscurantism, the protocols weren’t released. Question wordings and ordering are essential to evaluate whether the poll pushes respondents towards certain responses.
And even the support swap, essentially between Fleming and Cassidy, doesn’t make sense. Special interests aligned with Cassidy have launched an advertising broadside against Letlow, under the assumption that her presumably more moderate voters are more likely to defect from her to him than from Fleming, whose supporters tend to be more consistently conservative. If Cassidy had gained, it seems more plausible this would have come at her expense, not Fleming’s.
The opaqueness of the Cassidy campaign poll likely means it doesn’t as validly reflect what the contest’s dynamics really are in comparison to the older, but more transparent, independent poll. It may have been designed to give Cassidy a chance to obstruct the growing belief that he’s fighting for his political life, which meshes with the idea that he wants debates and only with Letlow, in following this strategy. In any event, Senate race observers may see a lot more back-and-forth over race dynamics over the next two months.
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