Hagan's Internal Polling Confirms Tight Race with Dole

Internal polling performed by Anzalone-Liszt for the Hagan campaign confirms the most recent independent polls released showing that the race for the NC Senate seat is much tighter than some believed it would be at this point. (Cross tabs not available.)

I realize conventional wisdom says to ignore internal polls and I usually do when they show a result far different from other polls. This internal poll confirms the Public Policy Polling results directly after the May primary election. It is also in line with the most recent Survey USA poll which was conducted prior to Elizabeth Dole's ads depicting her as a tourist in several NC cities.

There is a more recent PPP poll conducted after Elizabeth Dole took to the airwaves. It does show a slightly different picture. Dole's ad has picked her up 3 whole points. Yippee.

Do you remember how quickly Hagan pulled away from the four other Democratic candidates after she started running ads? None of the five had any name recognition and there was only one way for the numbers to move, so it was probably a little easier to pull ahead so quickly. Here, though, Dole has very high name recognition* and Kay's is relatively low in comparison and Dole is still only able to pull ahead by 3 points. There is a lot of room for Kay Hagan to move and not so much for Elizabeth Dole.

While he's backed off his assertion a bit, Tom Jensen has said he believes Hagan needs to match Dole dollar for dollar to win. I disagree. Hagan only needs enough money to get the word out and pull her name recognition up.

This isn't a cakewalk, but it is doable.

*I read somewhere that Dole's name recognition is somewhere around 95%, but I can't find that at the moment. I'll post it as soon as I come across it.