Poll Shows Giant Surge for Coleen Rowley!

[Disclaimer: This post was first published on Coleen Rowley's campaign weblog.]

Today SurveyUSA released a poll showing John Kline with 50% support, Coleen with 42% support, Independence Party candidate Doug Williams with 5% support, and 2% undecided. The poll's margin of error is 4.4%.

Ordinarily we wouldn't get too excited about a poll which shows us 8 points down, but this isn't an ordinary poll. There are some methodological concerns with this poll (after the jump), but the most startling thing about it is that it shows Rowley for Congress closing the gap by an amazing 12 points in just 19 days! An identical poll conducted by SurveyUSA in late September showed Kline with a 20-point lead.

If we keep it up at this rate, we'll win by a comfortable 6-point margin. And you can help make it happen!!

But wait, there's more! There are at least three good reasons to believe that we're even closer than the 8-point margin shown in the SurveyUSA poll.

• The poll's methodology is flawed in at least one obvious way. When asking the candidate preference question, the candidates are always presented in the same order, with Kline first, then Coleen, then Williams. Voters with no strong preference will often select the first choice offered, or the last, which is why most pollsters rotate the order of candidates when doing their polling. In this case, it seems quite likely that the consistent last-place position of Doug Williams artificially increased his total to 5%, considering that he has done no observable campaigning of any kind. It's reasonable, therefore, to believe that Kline's total is similarly inflated.
• Kline has conducted at least two polls this election cycle, in February and July. His campaign did not release the results of those polls, which they likely would have done if they had showed Kline with anything like the 20-point lead in the September SurveyUSA poll. So it's a fair guess that those polls showed that Coleen was within range of Kline. Since Coleen has narrowed the gap by 12 points in the SurveyUSA poll, Kline's pollsters would likely find the race very competitive indeed --- perhaps a bit too competitive.
• After a brief respite, Kline's campaign just today launched another direct mail barrage telling outright falsehoods about Coleen's position on immigration. We'll have more details on this one later, but Kline is clearly desperate; his campaign actually sent out two different mailers (that we know of) containing the same smear.

It's going to be an interesting 21 days. Please help out however you can.