CO-Quinnipiac: Gardner +8

[backtored]

So an NBC News poll showing Udall with a comfy lead is totally plausible but a Quinnipiac poll showing Gardner with a similar lead is not?  Sorry, but that doesn't make much sense to me.

Either way, Democrats here and elsewhere have pointed to Udall's consistent lead in the polls as evidence of the supposed "lean D" status of the race.  In two days you have as many polls showing Gardner winning, one of which is well outside the margin.  Is he up eight?  Probably not. But he may very well be leading at this point, which is means that this race is far from Lean D.

[backtored]

I'll just throw out "R+7."

Which is what 2010 looked like.  A reach?  Yeah, probably.  But certainly not crazy.  It is a rabbit chase trying to reconfigure voter screens and rectangle polling like that.  It is better to take it for what it is and throw it in with the rest of the polling data.  If you do that, you get a race that is probably very, very close.  I just happen to think that it will break strongly for Gardner.

[backtored]

So an NBC News poll showing Udall with a comfy lead is totally plausible but a Quinnipiac poll showing Gardner with a similar lead is not?  Sorry, but that doesn't make much sense to me.

Either way, Democrats here and elsewhere have pointed to Udall's consistent lead in the polls as evidence of the supposed "lean D" status of the race.  In two days you have as many polls showing Gardner winning, one of which is well outside the margin.  Is he up eight?  Probably not. But he may very well be leading at this point, which is means that this race is far from Lean D.

The +6 might have been a stretch, but it was at least in the ballpark of other polls (the two before and after it was +4, +2, +3, +4).  This poll is 7 points off from anything else out recently, 6 points off from anything out the entire cycle.

There have been polls showing Gardner up four and Gardner up two.  Like I said, the point isn't that Gardner is up by eight.  The point is that it doesn't make a lot of sense to infer from the data that either candidate has much of a durable lead.  The Lean-D proposition is hard to sustain when two polls in two days show the Democrat losing, especially when one of those margins is eight points.

[backtored]

The movement even within each individual poll has been favorable to Gardner.  Here is the movement for each polling company between now and the last poll that that company released:

PPP: Gardner +3

Rasmussen: Udall +1

Survey USA: New

CBS/NYT/YouGov: Gardner +1

Suffolk: New

Quinnipiac: Gardner +6

The last batch of polling was more favorable to Udall than the present batch, which is why many thought that Udall was polling away (get it?).  I find it more helpful to actually look at trends within each poll, and it is heartening to see that an entire summer of super-spending by Udall aimed at Gardner's abortion stance hasn't weakened the Republican much at all.  Now that there is a parity of spending, Gardner is probably feeling reasonably good about where he stands, even if it will still be a razor tight election.