Steve King Fighting To Save His Cantaloupes, And More Poll Fun!

That poor man. Just kidding LOL.

With a week to go before the midterms, we have polls raining down on us like ping pong balls on the set of "Captain Kangaroo," or boiled rabbits at a midnight showing of Fatal Attraction. More polls than an alligator-owning pot dealer's girlfriend would know what to do with, is what we're saying.

And best of all is a poll showing white nationalist ugly bag of mostly melon Steve King ahead of his Democratic challenger, J.D. Scholten, by just a single percentage point in the race for the 4th Congressional District in Iowa. it was enough of a change that the Cook Political Report revised its prediction from "Likely R" to "Lean R," although of course Scholten will still have to overcome a huge Republican registration advantage in the district.

As Wonkette alum Jim Newell notes at Slate, this is the closest anyone's come to taking down King, whose district went to Trump by 27 points in 2016. And people finally seem to be getting tired of King's White Power Ranger shtick, even though King still thinks tweets like this one are HILARIOUS:

Have a look at all the diversity at my annual “General Bud Day Pheasant Hunt”! We had English Setters, Brittanys, G… https: //t.co/7Sl05kxGkO

— Steve King (@Steve King) 1540872708.0 

Haw haw, Iowa has many white people! Of course, he's also lost some supporters like Land O'Lakes and Intel, and today, National Republican Campaign Committee chair Steve Stivers said nah, the hell with it, tweeting, 

Congressman Steve King's recent comments, actions, and retweets are completely inappropriate. We must stand up against white supremacy and hate in all forms, and I strongly condemn this behavior.

Didn't quite say don't vote for him, but it wasn't exactly a promise of an emergency ad buy, either. King, for his part, tweeted a link to an internal poll that shows he's whooping Scholten by 18 points "in spite of the most vile, evil, & deceptive attack's ever used in Iowa," and if you can't trust a Republican-bought poll, well then, you're probably destroying Western Culture, and in trouble with the Apostrophe Police, too.

Oh yes, and then there's this:  

A quick look under the hood of King's campaign shows that it's not in great health, either. His most recent fundraising disclosure showed that he only had $176,000 cash-in-hand after raising a mere $739,000 for the cycle. He hasn't spent on television advertising, as he did during his last serious challenge in 2012, and some of his largest regular disbursements are salaries paid to his son and daughter-in-law.

Family is so important. Scholten has raised $1.7 million and is doing an actual campaign with ads and everything, and also, notably, no white supremacy stuff, which is neat. Maybe you would like to help him out, huh? 

What other polling funtimes today? How about a Monmouth University poll showing Dem Antonio Delgado increasing his lead over incumbent Republican John Faso in New York's 19th Congressional District? Delgado had led Faso 49 top 44 percent, up from 48-45 in September. Notably, Delgado is kicking Faso's butt 54 percent to 38 percent among women. Guess the NRCC will have to run more of those TV ads trying to paint Delgado, a Rhodes scholar, as a scary "big city rapper" (he released all of one album) who sang violent urban rap lyrics. Such a violent and big city guy, if you know what they mean.

How about this, from Utah? Republican Congresswoman Mia Love is down by 6 points to Democratic challenger Ben McAdams in the first poll to show McAdams with a lead. The race still leans R in the averages, but hey, that's a thing, innit?

Senate-wise, Ted Cruz is still narrowly ahead of Beto O'Rourke in the Texas race for US Senate, although the latest Quinnipiac University poll has him up by just five percentage points, 51 to 46. That's an improvement for Beto against another Quinnipiac poll from early October that had Cruz up by 9 points.

In Arizona, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has a 6-point lead over Republican Martha McSally in the race for Jeff Flake's US Senate seat, according to an NBC/Marist poll. In September, Sinema had only a 3-point lead in the same poll, so that's darn nice! That lead dips a bit when the poll includes Green Party candidate Angela Green. Respondents who said they'd already voted early -- 44 percent of 'em -- mostly said they'd voted for Sinema, 51 percent, to 47 percent for McSally. Sinema is also creaming McSally among women and Latinos. Our cautious optimism runs mild!

The main takeaway from all this polling? Everything is insane and unpredictable, and you need to just do everything you can to get out the vote, amen. Let's flip Congress, OK?

[ Slate / Monmouth poll / KUTV / NBC News / NYT ]

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