Don Walton: Johanns, Bruning and a poll

 4 comment(s)  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

OK, about that poll.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s poll of Nebraska’s 2008 GOP Senate race got way too much attention last week.

Interesting?  Absolutely.

[+]Enlarge

Indisputable?  No.

Unquestionable indicator of the results of a primary election more than seven months away?  Hardly.

Just ask Tom Osborne and Dave Heineman.

Or Don Stenberg, Ben Nelson and Chuck Hagel, based on their experiences in 1996.

That’s why the NRSC poll results, interesting — and startling — as they are, appeared down in the 12th paragraph of a story about Mike Johanns and his return to Nebraska to enter the Senate race.

The NRSC results: Johanns, 58 percent; Jon Bruning, 16 percent; Hal Daub, 12 percent.

In an earlier poll commissioned by Bruning’s campaign, these were the results: Johanns, 39 percent; Bruning, 30 percent, Daub, 15 percent.

Daub, who withdrew from the Senate race last week, says he purchased  his own “benchmark analysis” survey.

In his survey, Daub says, Johanns was in the mid-40s and both Bruning and Daub were at about 17 percent.

However, Daub says, that wasn’t the only measure of Johanns’ strength.

“He is so well-liked, his approval rating so high and his negatives so low that, in my opinion, he’s nearly invincible,” Daub says.

And, he says, there’s even more.

“I was in Washington (last) Monday and Tuesday and came away convinced Johanns is their chosen spearcarrier. He will have all the money he needs.”

Daub says there’s no way he could raise the kind of money required to compete in that race.

Bruning is not blinking or budging.

During an interview on Coby Mach’s Drive Time Lincoln radio show on KLIN, Bruning was combative and unyielding.

“Hagel, Johanns and the Washington crowd are trying to run everybody out,” Bruning said. 

“If people are sick of Washington,” he said, why would they want to choose a man who was “the president’s lap dog while he was in Washington?”

Bruning questioned whether the NRSC poll even existed, calling it “a phantom poll.”

And he wondered whether “somebody just pulled a number out of a hat,” or whether the Washington crowd “put a poll on the street that’s been gamed” to yield the answers they desired.

Speaking to a trustworthy source on the phone who has looked at the entire survey, I’ve been told it’s a legitimate poll.

No leading or “push” questions to shape desired results. 

A straight-up question asking whether the respondent would vote for Johanns, Bruning or Daub. 

An accomplished pollster. 

Not a large survey, but reasonable in size.

A poll taken about the time Johanns’ resignation as secretary of agriculture to return to Nebraska dominated the news.

It’s one fragment, one factor in the ongoing 2008 Senate election story.

Hey, make of it what you will.

Finishing up:

* Daub’s departure is not good news. He would have forced an in-depth and detailed discussion about immigration, Social Security and Medicare.

* UNL speaker this week: Gillian Sorensen, senior advisor and national advocate for the United Nations Foundation, former UN assistant secretary general, wife of Ted Sorenen.  She’ll speak at the Student Union Wednesday at 3:45 p.m., discussing the UN and the United States.

*  With polling results scolding the newly-installed Democratic majority in Congress for not taking some action to change Iraq policy, Ben Nelson pointed last week to arithmetic. Democrats may hold a bare majority in the Senate, but they need 60 votes to act, he said, and “that’s the reality we’re working with.”

*  Michael Beschloss, who will deliver the annual Humanities Lecture in Omaha on Tuesday, says Abraham Lincoln became a favorite president of his at an early age.  When he visited Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Ill., as an 8-year-old and learned that Lincoln didn’t believe in discipline, he quickly decided “Lincoln was the man for me,” Beschloss said in an interview last week.

*  That’ll be a nasty crowd in Columbia Saturday night, a perfect time for the Huskers to get absolutely amped and catch fire.  GBR.

*  It’s October.  Play ball.

Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or at dwalton@journalstar.com