Sen: Polls Like Rolling Thunder

A week is a lifetime in politics, they say. More like a geologic era. I was away for only four days and the terrain has buckled and shifted beneath the feet of Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Avon) and Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Cedarville).

Just last Tuesday the Bliss Institute poll showed DeWine and Brown tied. A Survey USA poll countered that on Thursday, registering an eye-popping 14 point lead for Brown. Which was the outlier? Yesterday's surge of new polls favorable to Brown puts that question to rest: Quinnipiac poll - 12 point lead; Ohio Poll - 7 point lead; CBS/New York Times poll - 14 point lead. As reported in the Columbus Dispatch, it's the trends that really seal the deal:

In just the past month, Brown’s lead in the Ohio Poll grew to 7 percentage points from 4 points, and in the Quinnipiac University Poll it swelled to 12 points from 1 point. "I think it’s pretty clear there’s a wave out there that’s helping Democrats," said Peter Brown, assistant director of Quinnipiac’s polling institute.

And, I missed the whole flap about the front page New York Times story reporting the national Republican establishment pulling their resources out of this race to try a last stand in the Senate races in Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia. Today's news on that front is that the NRSC is putting at least $700,000 into a lame attempt to make an issue out of a mistake by Brown's campaign in 1992 that allowed a $1,776 unemployment tax bill to go unpaid until 2005, but that seems only to show that the DeWine effort has slipped down to the biting-the-ankles level of the failing guberntorial campaign of Ken Blackwell (R-Cincinnati).

When I got back to town last night I stopped by the local Coordinated Campaign office in order to pick up secretary of state candidate Jennifer Brunner (D-Columbus) signs for a Democratic Club meeting in Solon last night. I encountered Steve Lieber, a veteran poitical consultant working with the Brown campaign. I asked him how Friday's debate had gone and he said,"Excellent! It went great!" Then he leaned into me and gave me a little punch in the ribs. "We're winning this thing," he crowed.

He's right.