Yesterday morning, internet organizer extraordinaire Markos Moulitsas announced, under his nom de blog, Kos, that his organization had commissioned a poll from Research 2000 showing Ethan Berkowitz leading Don Young 49% to 42%, and Mark Begich leading Ted Stevens 47% to 41% "if the 2008 race were held today." This is the third published poll showing Don Young losing, the first I know of showing a similar fate for Sen. Stevens.Research 2000's sample is fairly wide. Their poll is less tainted than Berkowitz's early October Ivan Moore poll, and less analytical in terms of primary candidate comparisons than Diane Benson's mid-November Craciun Group poll. Benson's poll reflects the widest margin of victory over Young yet. But Kos's poll is perhaps unfortunate in that his article about the race we now have is, well - it isn't there.
Although he mentions that Mayor Begich hasn't filed for the hypothetical race, he doesn't mention that another candidate, Ray Metcalfe, has. And he fails to mention the interesting three-way race for the Democratic Party nomination for the seat now held by Young. Nor does he mention that a lot of the reason Young has three viable challengers is because one of them, Diane Benson, gave Young a scare last year, even though he outspent her ten to one.
Here are the three matchups:
Moore October 13:
Berkowitz 51%
Young 46.5%
Craciun November 2:
Benson 45.3
Young 36.7%
United 2000 December 7:
Berkowitz 49%
Young 42%
Kos's article has about 90 comments, which is low, considering the national interest in Alaska politics these days. But DailyKos is widely read, and not just on the left. So his poll was picked up by more blogs and small-circulation inside-the-Beltway-type publications than any article so far published about Alaska 2008. Google already has several pages of articles about the Kos article.
I'm glad to see interest grow in both these campaigns. The winners of the August 2008 primaries will have only nine weeks to campaign for the November general election, and in a climate where national interest will be focused on what promises to be the nuttiest presidential election in memory.
The Berkowitz campaign must be very happy about this. About a quarter million lefty bloggers now think that Berkowitz is the only candidate running against Don Young. Plus, some of the blog commenters have promoted him to "Speaker of Alaska House of Representatives." And several commenters were glad that Berkowitz, who "will never open ANWR," is running. Whatever. The race just keeps getting more interesting, eh?
Update - Wednesday morning:
Researching old Ethan Berkowitz polls, I came up with this one from May of 2006:
Governers Poll -
May 1 to May 6
If the election were held today,
who would you choose as the next Governor?
Ethan Berkowitz 30% - 174 Votes
Sarah Palin 25% - 156
Eric Croft 14% - 82
Tony Knowles 14% - 80
John Binkley 12% - 75
Frank Murkowski 5% - 28
photo of Kos by Lindsay Beyerstein