Dudes, if we weren't enthusiastic, we wouldn't have a 66 to 70 percent poll turnout. Normal mid-terms are lucky to get 40 percent.

We just want it to be OVER. The ads. The phone calls. The door knocking by my son so he can get a nice computer to play WoW on .... ok, that part's not so bad.

also, why would anyone in WA answer a poll from an NC number?

Really old people with landlines.

an enthusiastic tea partier from yakima can hop up and down in place waving their arms for 6 straight months, screaming that patty murray caused the housing market to collapse, and that enthusiastic vote counts exactly the same as my calm, rational one, which was mailed the day after the envelope arrived.

Irony of all irony. Pollster just posted the final Fox/Pulse (associated with Rasmussen) poll and they have the race: Murray 49 and Rossi 47.

Interesting that PPP (associated with DailyKos) would be an outlier in the final/recent polling.

This is so predictable. On election night Rossi will have a small lead. As subsequent counts come in over the next week the numbers will begin to shift until, as King county finishes its counts, Murray will be solidly in the lead.

By then, the right wingers will be screaming, SCREAMING, about vote fraud.

Been there, done that.

@5 they're tea baggers. Screaming is what they do.

That and paranoid fantasies about how the Saudis and Yemenis are going to bomb us ... oh, wait ...

PI has an article up on the 55-44 poll showing Comrade Rossi losing big time, by the way.

Funny how some fly-by-night poll suggesting Rossi's up by a couple of points is like a stick poking the anthill of "top Democrats."

I guess they figure the possibility of a few wavering morons deciding to vote with the perceived "winner" du jour is much greater than the likelihood of galvanizing into action some [perhaps equally idiotic] limp Dems who wouldn't otherwise have bothered to vote at all.

I'm skeptical of PPP's claim of an enthusiasm gap. But I'm equally skeptical of any internal poll conducted by either party.

Dear Will in Seattle,

With all due respect -- and you know I do respect you -- your assertion that typical mid-term election turnout is around 40% is utter bullshit. As shown by the Secretary of State's turnout data, since the start of age-18 eligibility the lowest mid-term turnout was 52.47% in 1978. In that 1974-2006 period, mid-term turnout has averaged just a smidge under 60%.

Statewide, we'll have to top 66.72% (in 1982) to establish a record.

Shit, all will be revealed soon enough. Just relax and make sure to mail your ballot.

@10 the original article it refers to is for the entire West. We vote a little more than other states in the West do.

Actually, the twin flaw with the robocall methodology is that PPP was calling on Friday, saturday, and Halloween. Any polling methodology tells you Friday- saturday numbers are always questionable and have to very carefully "weighted" to the likely voter pool to give real credibilty. Almost impossible with robocalls. But the bigger problem is halloween. No pollster worth their salt puts any weight on halloween calling. You get cranky old seniors on the phone, and wildly skewed results. That is crazy. PPP has done okay this year. But this one leaves me quite skeptical.