SV: Casey +9; WSJ: Casey +6; Survey USA: Rick 99th Worst

Well, we did say it would be a sad week for Rick Santorum.

The latest poll by Strategic Vision -- a Republican Pollster -- has no good news for the floundering reelection campaign of Pennsylvania's Junior Senator from Virgina.

SV's September 2006 Poll puts Casey at 50% and Santorum at 41% in a three-way with Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli (5%) (eeew, Santorum's not the only one who would shudder about such a three-way). A two-way race apparently sends the SV respondents into confusion -- Casey stays at 50%, Santorum drops to 40%, and all of Romanelli's supporters, and the defecting Santorum supporters, all fold into the 10% "idunno" category. This same poll gave Casey a six-point lead a month ago, pegging the Favorite Son's favorite son at 47% to Virginia's son's 41%. So I guess Santorum can tell his pillow "it's okay, I didn't go down".

This wasn't the Santorum team's game plan when they began spending their huge cash lead in August on television buys, soft image commercials, and lying, devious, attack ads. That's alot of money to spend and not gain an inch in nearly two months. Santorum can run on immigration, he can run on Casey's perennial campaigning, he can run on the subtle bigotry and irrational fear of Muslims, but he can't run from his record, which Pennsylvanians find dismal. The policies he supports are walking around the White House -- and EVERYone knows that. Pennsylvanians think Bush sucks (58% in this SV survey). Santorum's record is Bush's record, and that's broken.

Sliced with or without Romanelli, the meat of the Poll shows Casey winning this race handily.

The SV Poll puts Rendell comfortably ahead of the Republican challenger, Lynn Swann, 55% to 37%, despite 63% seeing Pennsylvania heading in the wrong direction. Hmmm, I wonder which party is in control of the Pennsylvania legislature . . . . oh, yeah, the Rs.

UPDATE 9/28/06: WSJ/Zogby Poll -- Casey up 6 Points

The Wall Street Journal/Zogby Poll released another set of figures today. According to this interactive online poll, Casey leads Santorum 45.8% to 39.8%. This represents a three-point drop for Santorum over the preceding WSJ/Zogby numbers and a one-point fall for Casey. The Poll was conducted between September 19 and 25. Your correspondent participated in the Poll. No other data is made available with these polls. They state that Carl Romanelli was part of the poll, but they do not give his numbers nor the undecided tally. The margin of error is 3.3%. The previous WSJ/Zogby poll, taken August 29 to September 5, had Casey at 47%.

Santorum 43%. Santorum continues to fall in every poll. In the last week, these are the polls we have seen:

Strategic Vision 9/28 Casey 50% Santorum 41%
Quinnipiac 9/26 Casey 51% Santorum 39%
Temple/Inquirer 9/24 Casey 49% Santorum 39%
Rasmussen 9/21 Casey 49% Santorum 39%
Keystone 9/21 Casey 45% Santorum 38%
Issues PA/Pew 9/21 Casey 52% Santorum 31%

Throwing out the 21 point Issues PA/Pew poll (because, we've never seen the actual poll results and it's a little out of line with the rest), the last six polls give Casey and average lead of 9 points. (N.B.: Where available, we used the three-way poll result.)

UPDATE II 9/28/06 -- SurveyUSA Releases September Approval Ratings for All US Senators

Look, we weren't kidding when we said this was gonna be a really, really bad week for Santorum.

Survey USA has released its latest Approval Ratings for All US Senators as of September 2006. Santorum is back down at the very bottom of the list, the 99th worst Senator in the United States, ahead of only Conrad Burns. A solid 53% say that they think Rick Santorum is doing a lousy job as their Senator.

This comes a scant month after the Virgina resident scored his highest approval rating in over a year (48%). This month's 53% number isn't as low as he's gone, though. That would be the 57% disapproval score he earned in May, 2006. But we have all the confidence in the world that Santorum can equal or "better" that 57% mark.

Independents (14% of respondents) trash the junior Senator with a 54% disapproval ranking; Moderates (39% of respondents) reject him with a 64% disapproval figure; Regular church goers (36% of survey), 50% disapproval, 45% approve; those never attending college (21%), give him thumbs down with 49% disapproval, 38% approval.


Mmmmmmmm, toasttt!

(PS from the "Ain't We Special Department" -- As near as we can tell, we were the first to bring you these three poll results.)