Democrats in Full Defense

Mark Udall’s team and allies are fighting back against the dominant narrative that polls and national forecasters are projecting – Udall loses.

He has released three internal Democratic consultant polls in the last week claiming that he is ahead. Mark Mellman, one of the party’s best known pollsters who correctly predicted the Democrats would win North Dakota in 2012 in spite of most of the public poll predictions, claims Udall is three points ahead (44% to 41%). President Obama’s pollster, Joel Benenson, also claims Udall is up three (47% to 44%). Finally and most recently, a local pollster, Chris Keating, asserts Udall’s lead has declined to one point, but he’s still up.

These polls were released the week of October 20 as Udall was contending with the “war on women” meme and poor national polls. They also argued public polls in Colorado have underestimated Democratic votes, especially Hispanic and cell phone voters (i.e., youth). FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten wrote a blog addressing most of the criticism, but, of course, one benefit of election polling is that on November 4 there will be a hard count.

The campaign’s main alternative narrative is not arguing polling accuracy, but highlighting what it hopes will pull the race out – GOTV.