Why I think that Matt Lindland will win

Well it is no surprise to folks who follow this blog that I have been involved with the Matt Lindland campaign in HD 52. It has been an interesting and invigorating race to say the least.

I believe it will be a close race and barring a downturn in Republican votes Lindland should win this race. He has matched VanOrman ad for ad on TV and Radio and has seriously out-paced her in direct mail.

VanOrman did attempt a pretty vicious (and factually incorrect) hit piece about a week ago that had a few folks on the ground a bit worried. However Lindland fired back with a great mail piece that answered VanOrman's false charges and turned the tables back on her. In fact the response from the community was pretty overwhelming as phone calls and emails came in very supportive of Lindland.

Shortly after that response piece hit the VO campaign went virtually dark in direct mail.

Here is the response piece that went out from the Lindland campaign a while back.

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But that is just the response piece. Lindland has had some pretty solid mail hitting pretty much every day that pointed out VO's support of increased taxes (gas tax, sales tax and cigarette tax). All of which that community is very solidly AGAINST. Here is a sample of a piece that last week.

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While there have been quite a few mailings into HD 52 that highlight VanOrman's propensity to increased taxes (and now borrowing) her response was slow, weak and nominal.

Yet interestingly enough in the last week and a half or so she did send out a couple of mailers that were really off of her original message. She made a weak attempt to sound like the candidate who would "protect the kicker." Huh?

That tells me something. It tells me that the tax message had been beginning to hit home and she needed to find a way to change her original message.

Now anyone involved in politics for any length of time will tell you that it is never a good sign if your candidate has to change his/her message in the final weeks of a campaign. Especially if you have invested so much time and treasure in your original message.

The Polls

Finally there is the issue of the polls. I had been watching the polling in this race for the last 4 months. And thus far the only movement of any note has been on the part of Lindland.

The undecideds were still pretty high in the last round of polling (and I am not about to say where his strengths were and were not) yet over the period of about two months Lindland's gains were about 2 to 1 in favor. VanOrman was holding pretty much steady.

This is a district that Republican Patti Smith won with 12% of the vote last time. There has been about a 6% gain in Democrat registrations (that number is a few months old so maybe it is up to 7 or 8 percent. Maybe.).

That still gives the Republican, in this case Matt Lindland, a 6% to 4% margin to play with when compared to 2006.

Does it mean a sure fire win for Lindland? Certainly not, as no one really knows what "turn-out" model to work with in this cycle. Also one does not really know what kind of impact the Obama campaign will have on a down ticket, mostly rural race that HD 52 is.

I have not seen any polling in the last couple of days, but what I can say is that if Lindland maintains the movement that he had been showing and the Republicans turn out to vote then he should win this race. Because VanOrman did nothing to change the game in the last week any objective observer would have to assume that her numbers will remain flat or static as the previous polls were showing.

My prediction: If Republicans turn out 88% or better of their voters in this district Lindland will win. Regardless of the Democrat turnout.