Down East 2013 ©
A new poll conducted by Pan Atlantic SMS shows a close race between Libby Mitchell and Paul LePage. LePage is ahead with 32.9% of the vote and Mitchell is slightly behind with 28%. Independent Eliot Cutler comes in at third place with 14%, Shawn Moody is at 4.6% and Kevin Scott garners just .4% of the vote, with 20.2% of those surveyed still undecided.
Both congressional incumbents are ahead by wide margins (with much smaller sample sizes, obviously). The Yes side of the casino referendum has a small lead - 49.1% to 44.7% and the land conservation bond (Question 3) is well ahead among those polled.
There are quite a few interesting points in the internals of this poll, including strong voter certainty for supporters of LePage and Mitchell (around 80%), with the number much lower for the independent candidates (around 50-56%) and a large gap in candidate preference between men and women.
Pan Atlantic continues to highlight a piece I wrote in 2008 noting that they came closest in that year's races (in fact, they include the Down East logo on every page of their results). Just to be clear, that was a judgment made based on very specific criteria about one poll they did in one year and not an overall endorsement of their methodology and results over time.
The poll of 501 likely Maine voters was taken from October 11-15th by live interviewers and has a 4.4% margin of error at the 95% confidence level.
Full results below.
Links:
[1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/39668550/Fall-2010-Omnibus-Results