More of those dueling internals

Robin Hayes put out a poll last week claiming to be leading by ten points over Larry Kissell. In June Kissell's campaign put out a poll saying they were leading by two. Who to believe?

There was a similar situation to this during the primary out east between Walter Jones and Joe McLaughlin. McLaughlin put out a poll claiming to be trailing by just two points, while Jones claimed at the same time to be leading by 38.

I said at the time, joking, that the best way to deal with the polls was simply to average them. That would have given Jones a 20 point lead. I was being sarcastic, but guess what- Jones won by 18 points, almost equivalent to the mean of the internals.

Using that methodology here Hayes leads by 4, a result perhaps not coincidentally quite similar to the six point lead we found for Hayes when we polled the race independently last month.

That's not a great place to be standing for a ten year incumbent whose challenger is going to get the resources he needs to run the strongest campaign possible this year.