SurveyUSA poll has Carnahan at 50 percent

Readers Joey Dee and T. Ball point me to the latest Survey USA poll giving Carnahan a 50-47 lead (which you can see here at Politics1).

I have badmouthed SurveyUSA polls all year, since their methodology is suspect (are there REALLY only 3 percent undecided in Missouri? I find that extrememely hard to believe). But polls of all persuasions have been all over the place, and ultimately, I'm resigned to giving Survey USA as much legitimacy (which is not much) as just about any other poll.

As I have said before, take all polls with several grains of sand -- they are good for getting an overall picture of a race. But in the most competitive races, the margins of error are so huge, and methodologies so divergent, as to make consistently accurate results difficult to come by.

Heck, take a look at the poll graph I posted a few days ago, to get a feel for how polls can ask a single question, and get results all over the place.

Perhaps one of my readers is a Missouri native and can give us his or her first-hand take on the race. But until I see a slew of polls with Carnahan at 50 percent or above, I will continue to consider her the Dems' most endangered Senator.

It doesn't mean I think she'll lose, just that if I knew beforehand that one Democrat would lose a Senate seat, I would assume it was her.

Posted October 22, 2002 10:27 AM | Comments (12)