Is North Dakota’s Senate Race Really A Toss Up?

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Written By:
Rob Port

Aug 25, 2012
12:29pm

Roll Call has bought into the Democrat myth-making about North Dakota’s Senate race and is changing their rating of the race to “toss up.”

Their reasoning seems to be based entirely on perceptions from afar and conjecture. And that steady stream of bogus polling the Democrats have been polluting the media with this entire cycle:

Polls have shown the race as a statistical tie for months. Although Democrats sponsored several of those surveys, Republicans have yet to respond with their own internal numbers.

For what it’s worth, I can’t explain why Berg doesn’t release any of his own polling figures, other than to point out that it really wasn’t his practice in the last cycle either (he released one internal poll late in the race, by my recollection). I have spoken with some with knowledge inside the Berg campaign who tell me they’re confident based on their polling, but I haven’t been shown anything.

That being said, why would anyone depend on polling from the political parties and the candidates for guidance in this race? As we learned with the Pomeroy race in 2010, Demcorats are more than willing to doctor up polling to create a narrative sympathetic to their candidate. It’s obvious they’re doing this with Heitkamp.

We should stop paying attention.

A review of the independent polling in the race, shows Berg with a significant lead. The Real Clear Politics average of polls, including that outlier from Mason-Dixon which showed the candidates tied, has Berg with a 5 point lead.

That sort of a lead in a state as overwhelmingly Republican as North Dakota hardly translates into a “toss up.” Though I really have to hand it to Democrats for being so effective in perpetrating that perception among professional political observers who, really, ought to know better.