MD-01: Baltimore Sun: Frank Kratovil (D) in the fight of his life

[Tender Branson]

40% Frank Kratovil (D-incumbent)
40% Andy Harris (R)
  1% Won't vote
  5% Refused
14% Undecided

The Baltimore Sun telephone survey of 520 likely voters in the First District was conducted Oct. 15-20. The Sun's pollster, OpinionWorks of Annapolis, used a Maryland Board of Elections database to identify registered voters with a history of voting in gubernatorial elections or who had registered to vote since the last election, and obtained survey results from those who ranked themselves seven or higher on 1-to-10 scale of their likelihood to vote. The Sun's sample was designed to approximate the racial, gender, geographic, partisan and age breakdown of the state's voting population as a whole, based on turnout patterns averaged over the last four Maryland general elections. Results were weighted to reflect a higher-than-average Republican turnout this year, and slightly lower African-American participation than in recent elections. The margin of error for the First District question is 4.3 percentage points, which means that in 95 times out of 100, the actual answer obtained by surveying every Maryland voter would be within 4.3 percentage points of the answer obtained by using the sample.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-first-district-poll-20101021,0,2964105.story

[Brittain33]

There's probably a post from me from December '08 here, and I'm surely not the only one, that identified Kratovil and Minnick as dead certain to lose in 2010. While I think Kratovil is still in tough shape, the fact he's doing better than approximately 30 incumbents or challengers in open D seats is pretty extraordinary.

[Skill and Chance]

This race is additionally important because if Kratovil wins, O'Malley (who is now heavily favored for re-election) will set him up for life in redistricting.  I have a strange feeling that he pulls it off, possibly even while Glenn Nye loses in a more favorable district just to the south.