A starling statistic from the Iowa Straw Poll won't leave my mind and may foreshadow many more Elections to come.

There were 26,000 total Tickets sold for this event, yet there were only just 14,302 votes tabulated.

Now think about that for a minute.
26,000 people purchase tickets to go to a Straw Poll event, and yet we are to believe that 12,000 of those people couldn't even care less about the voting part? Just what were they there for?

This is not believable.
12,000 people went through all that trouble to get a ticket, drive a long distance, wrestle around with parking, or public transportation, and spent their whole Saturday away at a crowded and noisy event, and then did not even vote for anybody?
What were they there for again?

There's more...

FEC filings on October 30 should three mammoth independent ad buys (some may have been 24 hour notices).  All of these buys are negative.  

The RNC made the largest buy of the day, totaling a whopping $1,699,000 in ads/services "against" Claire McCaskill.  They've concentrated on Senate races in NeweJersey, Missouri, and Ohio to that point spending only $9 million nation-wide.

The next largest purchase was $508,671 in RCCC expenditures against Joe Courtney in CT-4.  Connecticut and Missouri have become the money pits of the 2006 campaign.  FWIW, the NRCC had already spent over $70 million in "independent" expenditures this cycle compared to $46 million for Rahmo and the DCCC.  The gap is slightly larger now. (Ironic, isn't it, that Rahm is setting himself up as the one and only hero of the hour while Tom Reynold faces the high possibility of losing his seat due to fallout from Foley.)

There's more...

Cross-posted at Daily Kos.

To be certain, things getting a little crazy here in western Pa. Aside from the pathetic attempt at Swiftboating Rep. Murtha a little further east of this particular district and the game of TV ad whack-a-mole being waged by Rick Santorum and Bob Casey, the race between the upstart Democrat Jason Altmire and the once seemingly unbeatable incumbent Rep. Melissa Hart is en fuego!

Friday evening saw the arrival of Al Franken in the `burgh. Mr. Franken headlined a fundraiser for Altmire at a (really freakin' nice!) loft apartment in Pittsburgh's Strip District. Joining Big Al at the fundraiser was no other than Pittsburgh's new cherub-cheeked mayor, Luke Ravenstahl.

More, including some great polling news, on the flip...

There's more...

[Cross-posted at DailyKos]

I reported two weeks ago today that Rep. Melissa Hart, Rick Santorum's evil twin sister in Pennsylvania's 4th Congressional District, conducted a poll 3 weeks earlier (5, at this point) but had yet to release the results.

Now we know why: she is petrified of what she found.

According to a new poll conducted for Jason Altmire, Hart's Democratic challenger, by Anzalone-Liszt Research, Altmire is now at 48-44 - in favor of Hart, but within the 4.9% margin of error.

There's more...

So you're Rep. Melissa Hart, an incumbent House representative who has molded herself in the image of Sen. Rick Santorum and who has even been his regular campaign compadre over the past decade and a half. You have easily won the past few races in an overwhelmingly Democratic district, albeit one that is more culturally conservative. You had weak opponents who raised no money.

But it's a little bit different here in 2006. The climate for Republicans is, shall we say, troubling. It's edging closer to the November elections. The last independent poll showed that your Democratic opponent, Jason Altmire, was actually in striking distance, at 55 to 39 percent. And he achieved that with literally no media presence and limited name recognition.

Even so, you're an incumbent who has managed to stay under the "culture of corruption" radar. CW would say, "Results should be highly in my favor. Double digits most likely." Conventional wisdom just might be wrong.

There's more...