Good news (Polling Numbers) for Michigan Democrats

Alright, so I'm a bit superstitious, and I normally try not to look at poll numbers this close to E-Day, but there's so much good news that I just can't help myself.

First off, from my good buddy Nirmal at Capital Viewpoint.
Nirmal is a statistical whiz and he's broken down the latest EPIC-MRA Poll on the Granholm v. Tricky Dick DeVos race. Of course leave it to Lansing's very own WILX-TV to read it wrong.

The latest EPIC-MRA poll shows Granholm leading DeVos 52 percent to 43 percent. They sampled 600 likely voters over the past three days, with a margin of error of 4 percent.

The previous EPIC-MRA results, released Tuesday, showed Granholm leading DeVos 52% to 42%. Unfortunately, this has led WILX 10 to falsely claim that the "Race for Governor Gap Tightens." This is simply untrue. The margin of error is 4%, so a 1% difference in the results is not significant.

Of course, then there's Matt at MichLib who sat down with East Lansing's very own Poll Papa, Mark Grebner. Mark says the Gov's up by 5 (Matt's coming in at an optimistic 7). Jump on over to the story here and listen to Matt's interview with Mark. Good work, Matt!

And this just in from the LSJ's very own Election Blog. Derek Wallbank is the poor guy that got stuck with this beast of a blog and so far, he's done a pretty decent job of covering it. I don't always agree with him and I've commented to that effect on the blog a couple times, but for the most part, he deserves an 'A' for effort.
Today's post is aptly called "Dems chances to win MI Senate, House, upgraded"
Basically Derek got a hold of the recently released Rothenberg Political Report. Here's an excerpt.

Democratic chances to take the Michigan Senate and House were upgraded today as Lou Jacobson of the Rothenberg Political Report and Roll Call, moved them both to the "Lean Republican" category from "Likely Republican".

In Michigan, both chambers are now in play. While the improving fortunes of once-vulnerable Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) have helped her party, the bigger issue may be that a Kalamazoo-based millionaire, Jon Stryker, is spending several million dollars on independent expenditure TV ads that slam GOP incumbents in key districts.

Control of the Senate looks like it's coming down to four races, each currently held by a Republican:

Sen. Tom George vs. Rep. Alexander Lipsey (Kalamazoo area)
Sen. Laura Toy vs. Rep. Glenn Anderson (Westland/Livonia)
Rep. Roger Kahn (R) vs. Rep. Carl Williams (D) (Saginaw)
John Pappageorge vs. Andy Levin (Royal Oak)

Democrats need 3 of 4 to get a tie (broken by the Lt. Gov), 4 of 4 for a win.

Control of the House is a much tougher thing. Insiders say Democrats may lose former Rep. Herb Kehrl's seat, but should pick up Rep. David Farhat's. Beyond that, who knows?

As I've been saying, look south. If either party wins 3 out of the LSJ political blog's 3 target seats: the 67th (South Ingham County), 64th and 65th (Jackson County), they would almost assuredly win control. But polling in House races is very tough, and there's not much of it outside of internal polls. Anything could happen.

Anything could happen indeed!! Can't wait to see how the next couple days are going to play out. Keep your eyes and ears open!!!

~LL