Re: NY-23 Siena Poll Bad News for Owens

Re: NY-23 Siena Poll Bad News for Owens
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A quick update to Charles' post on the bad news for Democrat Bill Owens and good news for Conservative Doug Hoffman in the new Siena Research Institute survey in the wake of the withdrawl this morning by Republican Dede Scozzafava.

Charles noted that Scozzafava supporters in the survey (20% of all likely voters) rate Owens almost a negatively (50% unfavorable) as Hoffman (57%). That's important, but so are the party leanings of those voters. The Siena crosstabs did not include party identification tabulation, but I emailed the folks at Siena and they kindly shared the following data:

So Scozzafava voters, as of this past week, identify Republican by a more than three-to-one (64% to 19%) margin. At a minimum, it is clear that many Scozzafava supporters that choose to vote for someone else on Tuesday will have to resolve some attitudes in conflict, especially if Scozzafava herself makes no formal endorsement (her name will remain on the ballot; Nate Silver also points out that they also rate Barack Obama 64% favorable, 31% unfavorable).

Also, a post-script for your how-do-polls-influence-campaigns file: As Josh Marshall noted, in an local newspaper interview, Scozzafava attributed her decision in part to the results of the same Siena poll: "Ms. Scozzafava told the Watertown Daily Times that Siena Research Institute poll numbers show her too far behind to catch up - and she lacks enough money to spend on advertising in the last three days to make a difference."

Finally, PPP put a NY-23 poll in the field this morning that obviously got a little scrambled. Be sure to read Tom Jensen's review of their "NY-23 Polling Odyssey."

Update: Charles has much more here.

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