Saturday, August 05, 2006

Joe Knows   [George Conway]

As Kellyanne always says, the best polls, the polls that are truly unbiased, are the polls you never see — the internal polls conducted by political partisans, the ones that politicians rely on to decide how to advance their ambitions or to save their skins, the ones that tell them how and where to spend the money they've worked so hard to raise — not the "nonpartisan" media polls that are biased toward creating headlines that match the preconceived notions of editors and reporters. After that last weekend in November 1980, Richard Wirthlin and Pat Caddell knew exactly what was going to happen — and told their candidates so well before those of us who were just watching TV had anything more than a clue.

What are Joe Lieberman's pollsters telling him? Well, we don't exactly know, but this New York Times story today gives us some pretty significant clues.  It seems that the Lieberman campaign is giving up some of its ground game for an air attack:

But in the waning hours of the most closely watched Democratic primary in the nation, Mr. Lieberman, a three-term incumbent, appears to be ceding some tactical ground to his opponent in favor of running new advertisements emphasizing his message that voters should see him for more than his vote to authorize the war in Iraq.

People affiliated with the campaign said it had dropped plans for a far-reaching — and expensive — get-out-the-vote effort that would have added as many as 4,000 new workers and volunteers to the campaign in its final days.

“We haven’t closed the sale with Connecticut Democrats, and so we need to spend some resources to get our message out on TV and radio and direct mail,” said Sean Smith, Mr. Lieberman’s campaign manager. “That said, we continue to have a robust get-out-the-vote operation.”

By downsizing the large-scale ground operation, which analysts said could have added at least five percentage points to his support, the Lieberman campaign seemed to be indicating that Mr. Lamont’s lead had grown too wide to be overcome by phone calls and door-knocking alone.

Not only that, but some of Lieberman's top union supporters are "leaving the state," and his friend and supporter, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, is saying publicly that Lieberman should forget running as an independent if he gets creamed next Tuesday. All of which is consistent with what Rich Lowry says here.

Ironically, Lieberman publicly kvetched early on about how he could be hurt by the low turnout of an August primary. But turnout doesn't help if the people who turn out don't vote for you. In any event, turnout may not be so low this year, after all:

In a sign of the tremendous interest in the primary, nearly 11,500 voters have changed their status from unaffiliated to Democrat, Connecticut’s secretary of state, Susan Bysiewicz, said yesterday. That was up from the 6,715 Ms. Bysiewicz said had switched their status earlier in the week.

If turnout is relatively high, and Lieberman gets trounced, it'll be awfully hard for him to justify running on an independent line.

UPDATE: The Hartford Courant says Connecticut's town clerks are "inundated" with voters changing their registration status:

As Tuesday's primary draws near, town halls across the state are being inundated by people who want to register with the Democratic Party, according to the secretary of the state and town registrars. . . .

Registrars from Rocky Hill to New Haven say their offices have been busier than ever, local clerks said. In Manchester, 20 people have been walking into the registrars' office each day to sign up to vote. Usually, foot traffic is limited to one or two people a day, said Republican Registrar Barbara King. Other registrars say the number of unaffiliated voters who have become Democrats is especially high.

"Even in the presidential primaries, you don't see a lot of changes or new registrations. You see some, but it's usually just before the election," said Peg Byrnes, the Democratic registrar in East Hartford. . . .

"Some of them have indicated that the day after the primary they're going to go back to being unaffiliated," Byrnes said.

08/05 08:49 AM