Perdido 03

Perdido 03

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Why These Blowout Polls Between Lhota And De Blasio Can Become Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Two polls out this week showing Bill de Blasio beating his GOP opponent Joe Lhota by 41% and 43% respectively.

We have almost seven weeks to go before the election and and a lot can happen in that time for Lhota to turn this race around.

The problem for him, however, is that if he doesn't turn the race around sooner - like in the next three weeks - and have some polls come in showing him substantially narrowing the gap between himself and de Blasio, the big money donors who might ordinarily jump into the race with outside expenditures that supplement Lhota's campaign won't bother.

Billionaires like the Koch Brothers didn't become billionaires by throwing their money away on losing causes and they'll find somewhere else to put their political donations if they think Lhota doesn't have a shot.

As Azi Paybarah wrote at Politicker:

Poll findings themselves may have a detrimental impact on Lhota's candidacy, by depressing his ability to raise money for his campaign, and motivate donors to fund independent expenditure groups which can spend unlimited amounts of money attacking his opponents and promoting his candidacy.

That's the danger here for Lhota.

Add the polling issues to the self-inflicted "mall cops" crack Lhota made that pissed off the Port Authority cops and their families and the toll hike he levied on Staten Islanders that has him struggling in what should be a slam dunk win for him in New York's most Republican-friendly borough and you have Joe Lhota having a very deep hole to climb out of to make this race competitive.

He'll never get out of that hole if the big money donors shun him or decide not to spend unlimited amounts attacking de Blasio.

5 comments:

  1. Bring on the oppo resarch on Lhota.
    I'd estimate that in contrast to'09, this was an election in which the web and blog followers seeped word on the Quinn record and that this had a big impact. Granted not allread the blogs, butenough did and theylet their friends know.

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    1. I think the NYC Is Not For Sale ads were terribly damaging to Quinn. I don't think they have the same jones for Lhota that they had for Quinn, though. It will be interesting to see if any independent outside groups target de Blasio for Lhota. He's going to need that help and right now, he doesn't seem to be getting it.

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  2. You know criticism of Obama generally carries a taint of racism. So, basically, in polite company people are wont to criticize him.

    The criticism of de Blasio similarly fails to rise above the gutter --witness this piece from Daily News with voter saying vile things against his kids. http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2013/09/joe-lhota-defends-bill-de-blasios-kids-after-voter-calls-them-sickening-0 So vile that even Lhota had to criticize the voter's comments.
    So, Lhota's got the diss-the-PA cops taint. Now the campaign seems to be the cause of the hate site trolling crowd. What voter would want to associate him/herself with that crowd.
    That, plus the fact that this city not too friendly to families making under 100,000, and I can't see a groundswell for Lhota.
    Even ads claiming that the $500,000+ aires will leave, a la Cuba or Venezuela, will seem laughable.
    Even Giuliani had telegenic kids to tote around. Lhota?, nada.
    And the organized right at the moment is fractured --Tea Party, anti-Common Core, with a lot of birther type delusions tossed in vs. the moneyed mainstream. And for the coming few weeks, organized right is heavily fixated on bringing down the government (if temporarily, just for budget) to derail Obamacare.
    At this rate, especially with the hater-caboose (don't forget the despicable polling about de Blasio's family) tied to Lhota, I can't see Lhota narrowing the margin narrower than 10%.

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    1. Unless there is some major event that shakes up the campaign, I'd say the margin will be closer to 20% than 10%. But I'm waiting for the powers that be to have their major news event. It's convenient how these things always seem to happen close to election time. I wouldn't be surprised to see the boys trot out the terror alert thing in late October. That's an old favorite.

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