Things just got hotter for the two North Dakota hopefuls running for Senate.
A new Rasmussen poll on the race between Republican Congressman Rick Berg and Heidi Heitkamp shows Berg pulling ahead.
He's up by nine points over his Democratic opponent, a significant change from numbers released just last month. Our VNL poll showed Heitkamp in a near dead-heat with Berg, with her leading him 47 to 46 percent.
At first glance, it looks like a pretty simple apples to apples comparison. Both polls announce they have a 4.5% margin of error, and both polls show strikingly similar numbers of undecided voters -- eight percent for Thursday's Rasmussen poll, seven percent for ours from back in June. But there are a couple of hidden, critical differences -- ones you wouldn't know about unless you talked with the political scientists we did.
Retired MSUM Political Science professor Jim Danielson says Rasmussn asked a significantly higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats how they were voting -- 42 percent Repubs, 28 percent Dems. He says that's a problem for predicting how people will vote come November, because even in a red state like North Dakota, that's too many Republicans. It's true Democrats are a minority in North Dakota, but not that big a minority. Danielson says the margin is more like eight to ten percent more Repubs in the state. There's an additional factor confusing the issue, as well: North Dakotans often turn in sixty or so percent majority votes for their Senators. However, they can do so entirely against party lines. Those sixty-percent support numbers routinely came in from registered Republican voters for Democratic Senators Byron Dorgan, and outgoing Senator Kent Conrad -- who is also a Democrat.
"My guess is that the tide may be shifting against Heitkamp, but not in that dramatic a sense. And she's doing quite well in terms of fundraising lately, so I think you'll see in her ads, her campaign will be coming out with a much more aggressive, more open, more consistent message."
Heitkamp's people just announced they raised nearly a million dollars in the last quarter. Berg hasn't released his numbers yet.
There's another issue with this poll, says MSUM political scientists Dr. Barbara Headrick. The timing in mid-July is a time when the average voter has tuned out politics. She agrees with Danielson's evaluation of the Rasmussen poll being plagued with a "house effect" of leaning Republican. And she says it may not be worth putting much stock in the findings of today. Wait until numbers start to come out in September, she writes.
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2013 WorldNow and Valley News Live. All Rights Reserved. 
