SantorumBlog

K-Lo writes at the Corner.

I’m told by a good, albeit Republican, source that Gov. Rendell’s latest internals have Santorum only 5 behind.

I’m told he had Santorum at 9 on Friday and 17 three weeks ago.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, this race is in play. The innane analysis is that turnout means everything. But it couldn’t be more true in the Keystone state. Conservatives in Pennsylvania can make a big difference tomorrow — between winning and losing a leader.

Maybe that 4 point race polling wasn’t that far out?

Update: The email tipster who sent me this writes….

I’ll give Rendell his due — he really is trying to help Rick, either that or he really, really dislikes Casey.

That’s a good point.

I bet Rendell hates Casey. Still bad blood over the Democrat primary four years ago, and the fact that Rendell worked for his place in Pennsylvania politics. Bobby Casey certainly didn’t.

That and the whole Rendell endorsement of Santorum.

Ok, this time for real, these have to be the final polls before tomorrow.

McClatchy / MSNBC:

In Pennsylvania, incumbent Republican Sen. Rick Santorum is still well behind his Democratic challenger Bob Casey, with Casey currently ahead by 13 percentage points, 52 percent to 39 percent, with 7 percent undecided. In an MSNBC/McClatchy poll conducted two weeks ago, Casey was up by 12 percentage points.

McCulloch polled over the weekend.

U.S. Senator Rick Santorum has gained ground in his bid to win re-election, according to a new poll released Monday. The poll of 800 very likely general election voters, was conducted by McCulloch Research & Polling, an independent polling company out of Chicago, on November 4-5.

Santorum’s opponent, State Treasurer Bob Casey, Jr., led the incumbent Senator 48.1-44.1%, according to the poll. “Senator Santorum has a history of closing hard at the end of his campaigns,” said pollster Rod McCulloch. “It looks like this campaign will be no different.”

Treasurer Casey racks up his largest margin geographically in Southeast Pennsylvania, where he leads Senator Santorum 53.7%-37.1% in the region encompassing Philadelphia and surrounding counties.

Senator Santorum, who racked up overwhelming majorities during his last election in 2000 in Central and Northwestern Pennsylvania, is seeing some of those voters returning to the fold, according to the poll. The second term Senator leads in Central Pennsylvania (55.1-38.8%), South Central Pennsylvania (55.0-44.1%), Northeastern Pennsylvania (54.6%-38.1%), and Northwestern Pennsylvania (48.3%-41.4%).

According to my spreadsheet, that’s the closest position Rick Santorum has ever been in.

Update: Keystone Politics removes the poll from their site.

Further research into McCulloch Research and Polling shows that Rod McCulloch, principal at the firm, has been indicted in voter fraud and forgery in Illinois.

It’s good to know Democrats are concerned about voter fraud. Particularly in Chicago.

Update: Strategic Vision is out.

12. Do you approve or disapprove of United States Senator Rick Santorum’s job performance?
Approve 45%
Disapprove 43%
Undecided 12%

13. If the election for United States Senate were held today, and the choice was between Robert Casey, Jr. the Democrat or Rick Santorum the Republican, whom would you vote for?
Robert Casey, Jr. 52%
Rick Santorum 40%
Undecided 8%

All Polling

Other “final polls” from last week.

Muhlenberg: 51/43

Quinnipiac: 52/42

Zogby: 52.7/43.8

Keystone: 53/38

Muhlenberg’s final poll is out today.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry’s case of combat boot-in-mouth disease has done nothing to improve Rick Santorum’s chances of holding onto his job, according to the final Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll of the fall campaign.

Democratic challenger Bob Casey Jr. holds an eight-point lead over Santorum, the third-ranking U.S. Senate Republican. Casey, the state treasurer, leads Santorum 51 percent to 43 percent, with 3 percent undecided.

This is a change over the last poll which showed a five point race. The Margin of error is 4.3%.

79% of Philadelphia’s Black community are going to vote for Bob Casey, according to a Philadelphia Tribune poll.

While African-American voters do not demonstrate an intention to choose different candidates than have been designated by mainstream voters in other recent polls, what is clear in the Tribune Poll is that the City’s black voters are significantly more definitive about their choices for the two offices, with 88 percent of the respondents saying they are likely to vote for Rendell and 79 percent saying they are likely to cast their vote for Casey.

6% expressed an interest in voting for Santorum, leaving 15% undecided.

How many of the 15% know that Bob Casey takes them for granted?

Strategic Vison’s last poll is out.

It shows Casey at 49, Santorum at 39 and undecideds at 12%.

Casey holds steady at 49, while Santorum loses 3 since the last poll.

The margin of error was 3 points.

Well, that’s the headline anyway.

Polls: Rendell, Casey Hold 2-Point Leads Over GOP Opposition

In reality, the newest Quinnipiac shows a 10 point race, 52/42 with 6 percent undecided.

That’s a gain one for Casey and three for Santorum since the last poll a month ago.

Zogby/WSJ has a new poll posted, it’s probably also their last.

It shows Casey up 52.7 to Santorum’s 43.8%. This is a change of +0.3% for Casey and a loss of one half for Santorum over their last poll.

The last Keystone poll for the Senate race is out.

Democrat Bob Casey has opened up a 15-point lead over Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum — more than double the lead the challenger held in September — according to a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review/WTAE-TV Keystone poll released today.

Casey leads Santorum 53 percent to 38 percent, with 9 percent undecided, according to the telephone poll of 626 registered voters conducted over five days ending Sunday. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

This is a gain of five for Casey, and no movement for Senator Santorum.

Michael Barone looks at polling and get out the vote efforts.

He writes…

Fewer people vote in off-year elections than in presidential years. In 2002, 75 million people voted. In 2004, 122 million did. My hunch is that people who identify themselves as independents are substantially less likely to vote this year than people who identify as Republicans or Democrats — which would be good news for Republicans, since independents give Bush low job ratings. Another hunch is that the Republican turnout apparatus, with which the Democrats haven’t yet caught up, will boost Republican turnout as it did in 2004, and that the resulting electorate will be more evenly divided in party identification than the electorates shown in most of the public polls.

Serious pollsters concede that there are some problems with polling. Americans have fewer landline phones than they used to, and the random digit dialing most pollsters use does not include cell-phone numbers. Larger and larger percentages of those called are declining to be interviewed.

Interviewers can inject bias in the results. The late Warren Mitofsky, who conducted the 2004 NEP exit poll, went back and found that the greatest difference between actual results in exit poll precincts and the reports phoned in to NEP came where the interviewers were female graduate students — and almost all the discrepancies favored the Democrats.

… and 10% still undecided?

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points. Commissioned by WHYY, the public broadcasting station serving the tri-state region, the poll was conducted by West Chester University’s Center for Social and Economic Research.

The poll also found that respondents felt that Rendell and Casey would each do a better job than their opponents when dealing with health care, the war on terror, the war in Iraq, property taxes, and leadership. The poll also gauged public opinion about one-gun-a-month legislation (61.5% approve), building a wall along the border with Mexico to combat illegal immigration (49.4% approve), and same sex couples being allowed to marry (52.2% disapprove).

An initiative of WHYY’s News & Public Affairs Service, the poll reflects 601 telephone interviews with registered voters throughout the state who indicated that they were certain or likely to vote. The initial summary of data collected for the survey was conducted October 22 through 25, 2006.

Tonight, CNN invited Rick Santorum and Bob Casey to appear for a short, five minute debate at 10:15PM ET. As expected, Casey turned down the offer. Here’s my paraphrasing of what was said, a lot of which is word for word transcription:

CNN Sunday Night Anchor Carol Lin: (Shows part of Santorum’s “Wrestling” ad) That is the latest from US Senator Rick Santorum is his fight to keep his job. He has the wrestling metaphor right; Democrats only need six seats to take the Senate, and the latest poll shows Santorum down 16 percentage points (?! I must have missed that one) against his opponent Bob Casey. We invited Mr. Casey on for a debate but his campaign manager said that his schedule would not permit (haha!). So joining me now is Senator Santorum. Senator, good to have you.

Senator Rick Santorum: Thank you Carol, it’s great to be on. I wish I could have had my opponent on, but that’s a pretty common occurrence, he doesn’t show up for many appearances.

Lin: That’s what I understand. A kind of low key but interesting strategy. Let’s talk about the wrester ad. Very interesting metaphor; perhaps even more blatant, linking yourself with Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman but not President Bush; why is that?

Santorum: I think my opponent does a pretty good linking me with President Bush. He only says two or three sentences: “New Direction”, “98% of the time he votes with George Bush” and “We need change”.

Lin: Is that true (that you vote with Bush 98% of the time)?

Santorum: He looks at 21% of the votes I cast last year, and of those, 60% were nominations. It’s a pretty selective view. Sure I support the president, but for the record, I was in Washington before the president was in Washington, so I like to think that the president supports me that percentage of the time (heh).

Lin: As well he might should, since you were in charge of getting him the key votes back in 2004 in the presidential race. Political analyst Larry Sabato says that this race now is more about a vote against Rick Santorum is a vote against President Bush. Do you feel that the Bush administration’s policies are working against you as you’re running for re-election?

Santorum: Well, I don’t know. I’ve tried to run a campaign that talks about what I’ve accomplished, like in this ad. My opponent hasn’t run a single positive campaign in this election; he has run all negative. As Larry, your analyst, said, he’s trying to link me to the president whose numbers are not particularly popular here. What I’ve tried to do is talk about how I fight hard to keep Pennsylvania’s families safer, against Islamic fascists, internet predators, gang violence, and other threats. I’ve talked about positive things, how I’m going to make things different, and my opponent has said nothing.

Lin: But I’m trying to figure out where you stand here with the current Republican majority and with the president. Newt Gingrich tonight released an email calling for the party faithful to rally. The political director at the White House, Sarah Taylor, says that the president is loved by his base, and that they support him. Do you believe that to be true?

Santorum: The president has a very solid base of support without question, and I think we do to, and it’s a substantial one here in Pennsylvania. I heard you talk about that poll, 16 points down. The majority of polls that are out have us within single digits, as close as 5 points, and we know this race is very close. We have a lot of energy here, our base is energized, because they understand that the choice is between someone who understands the threats that face us and understands how to keep this economy going, and someone who simply is not prepared to do this job, who is hiding from the people of Pennsylvania, who is not answering questions, and who does two campaign appearances a week. This guy is trying to inherit the job, while I am working for the job as I have for the last 12 years.

Lin: Some have said that that is a specific strategy because your reputation and your affinity for the president is ammunition enough.

Santorum: Well, I think the people of Pennsylvania are smart enough to figure out that they want someone who is going to be a fighter, someone who is going to be honest with them. They may not agree with everything I say, but they know that I’m going to tell them from the heart exactly what I’m going to do. But Bob Casey, I challenge the people of Pennsylvania, what have you heard Bob Casey say in the last year plus that he’s been a candidate that gives you any idea what he wants to do as US Senator except give you a quote “New Direction”. A new direction on the economy is bad; the economy is doing well, and this is a guy who gives us no specifics.

Lin: Alright, well, it appears that the war is on many people’s minds. Senator Santorum, I want to let our audience know that Bob Casey’s people said that there was a scheduling conflict (Bobby needs his beauty sleep, after all).

Santorum: Yeah. I think you offered to do a taped recording.

Lin: A tape, and he could not be here at this time slot.

Santorum: Yeah, well, he had a scheduling conflict this morning, he has scheduling conflicts every day. He doesn’t want to talk to the people of Pennsylvania.

Lin: Alright. Well, the vote is scheduled for November 7th (I wonder if Casey will have a scheduling conflict then), and we’ll see what the outcome of this race is. Senator, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

Santorum: Thank you, Carol, appreciate the time. Thank you.

Once again proving that he is no right-wing partisan, Fox News’ Chris Wallace confronted Senator Santorum with some tough questions this morning. As usual, Santorum stood his ground and answered the questions while Casey was off hiding somewhere. (Note: These are not direct quotes, but rather are my paraphrasing of the questions and answers - Update: An actual transcript is up on FoxNews.com):

Wallace: Polls show you behind by more than 10 points. You have been in the Senate for twelve years… why shouldn’t we look at this and say Pennsylvanians know who Rick Santorum is, and they just aren’t buying this year?

Santorum: We have a lot of polls that show different than that, and we’re happy about our position right now. I’m out talking about the important issues of the day. I’ve talked about the “Gathering Storm”, the threat we face. The people are beginning to understand that we need leadership, not people who hide, as my opponent who didn’t come on the show today. He has nothing to offer but ‘let’s raise taxes’.

Wallace: Let’s look at one of your ads. (Shows the last few seconds of the “Baltic Avenue” ad) Bob Casey along with pictures of Kim Jong Il, Ahmadinejad and a mushroom cloud! How do you justify making the case that he votes for Amnesty and is therefore soft on terrorists?

Santorum: He’s against the missile defense system and he’s against nuclear-tipped bunker busting bombs which would be necessary to take out installations in Iran.

Wallace: But you said he supports Amnesty for illegals and therefore is soft on terror.

Santorum: You only showed a piece of that ad. The other things I mentioned are a part of that ad, including NSA wiretap which he refuses to take a position on. I came out and made a long speech about these issues and he accused me of fear-mongering. I’m not fear-mongering; I’m describing reality.

Wallace: Let’s talk about the reality of the vote on illegal immigration. All he said is that he would vote for the comprehensive immigration reform package in the Senate, which was supported by 23 Republican Senators and President Bush! Does that make them soft on terror?

Santorum: (Nods, “yes”) I think in that particular respect, yes. Anything that says to the people of the world that they can break our laws, come into our country, and we’ll give them Amnesty, then you encourage more people to come and I think that does allow for the opportunity (of an attack) if we don’t secure the borders. An overwhelming majority of Pennsylvanians reject the Senate bill.

Wallace: Senator, you’re saying that your Pennsylvania colleague Arlen Specter, and George W. Bush, both of whom supported that bill, are soft on terrorists?!

Santorum: I don’t know how I can make it more clear, Chris. If we don’t secure the borders and if we give Amnesty, then we’re going to get more people in this country that I believe could be a threat to this country and I think we’re seeing that.

Wallace: You also link Casey to US casualties in Iraq since he has opposed energy exploration. (Shows clip of Santorum blasting Casey for playing to environmental extremists at the expense of our troops in the Middle East.) Senator, I thought we went into Iraq to get rid of Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Santorum: I think everyone realizes that the principle reason why Islamic fascism is the threat that it is today is that they have resources and they have oil. The only way we’re going to holistically confront this threat is to develop energy security in this country. We need to use all means necessary, but Casey is against offshore drilling. China is drilling 50 miles off the shore of the US, but he won’t allow the US to drill 100 miles off the shore. He’ll allow 3,700 gas and oil wells to be drilled in western PA last year, but he won’t allow us to drill less than 1,000 wells in the north slope of Alaska over the next 25 years. Our men and women are out there and they’re sacrificing because they (Islamic fascists) have resources to be able to project power. The only reason Iran can get a nuclear weapon is that they have the oil revenue. We have to use every resource we have to become energy secure!

Wallace: Pennsylvania does not have a gay marriage ban on the ballot, but are you going to try to make gay marriage an issue because in the neighboring state of New Jersey, the Supreme Court there just said that same-sex couples should have full legal rights?

Santorum: My opponent and I are very different on this issue. He said that he would fight against any state or federal constitutional amendment that would secure the right of the people to define what marriage is. He would allow the courts to decide the issue. I don’t believe in that. On the great moral issues of our time, the people have a right to speak and say what their collective morality is, and what kind of country they want to live in. A few unelected or even elected judges should not impose that. He would go along with the unelected judges. He supports civil unions.

For the record, this program aired on Fox 53 WPGH in Pittsburgh. About halfway through the show, Santorum’s Wrestling ad aired. That means his ads are back on non-cable stations.

Update by AlexC: Mark Kilmer also blogged it at Redstate. He writes…

Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum was Wallace’s next guest on FNS. (They invited Bob Casey also, but junior didn’t dare to appear in public. Again.) Wallace pointed out that most polls show Rick trailing by double digits, but Santorum claimed to have internal polls “that show a lot different.” Rick said he is trying to get the message out of what is at stake in this election, and he cited his Gathering Storm speech.

Rick pointed out that Casey “hides from the public… because he has nothing to offer.”
Wallace played a clip of Rick arguing that opposing the use of domestic energy benefits the terrorists. Santorum said that Islamic fascists are taken so seriously because they have oil. Casey, he said, opposes offshore drilling and exploration in ANWR.

Given what just happened with the courts in New Jersey, Wallace asked, is gay marriage an issue in the Pennsylvania race? Rick thinks so, and he pointed out that Casey would remove the ability to define marriage from the people and give it to a few judges. He said that Casey supports gay marriage without the term “marriage,” i.e.– civil unions.

… and I saw the North Korea ad on Philadelphia’s WTXF Fox 29 10 o’clock news.