Zimmerman CD 8 Congressional Poll for September 16-18

A new poll on the Giffords/Graf race was reported in the Star today. I don’t have much to say about it, because all it does is confirm what we already have seen in the ‘Clinton’ poll.

The Zimmerman poll has Giffords at 48.5% and Graf at 35.7% with an undecided group of 13.4%, a combined third/independent vote of 2.5%, and a Margin Of Error (MOE) of 3.9%.

The previous poll had a MOE of 4%. Graf’s support in both polls falls very comfortably with the MOE. There is no movement, which is not surprising as the polls were conducted contemporaneously. The two polls indicate that Graf is indeed at about 35% give or take a few points.

Giffords’ two different shares of the electorate 54% and 48% are near the limit, but still within the combined MOE of the two measurements. This probably indicates that the actual figure is somewhere in the middle, perhaps 50% to 52%.

That’s still a probable 15% gap. That’s a substantial lead.

The biggest discrepancy is the undecided group: 13.4% vs. 6%. The results are are at the extremes of the MOE. This, along with common sense, indicates that the ‘Clinton’ poll was probably pushing people off the dime. Good news for Graf is that there may be more persuadables out there; bad news is that they may tend to roll to Giffords when pushed. My gut, and the confirmatory party crosstabs indicating 10% of Dems and 15% of Repubs undecided in the Zimmerman poll, indicates that the the higher number of undecideds may be more accurate, and that Republicans tend to be sitting on the fence about their candidate with greater frequency.

Overall, there are no surprises here, and certainly no momentum for Graf. Both polls closed on the same day, and they both show essentially the same data with 95% certainty. Anyone who thinks this poll is good news for Graf in any way, has drank seriously way too much Kool-Aide.