SurveyUSA has a new poll that has Sen. Allen with a five point lead over Jim Webb. The entire poll was conducted after the latest bruhaha. But, in what is sure to be the headline grabber (hence the headline of "Virginia Senate race in flux"), SurveyUSA wrote the following:
In an election for the United States Senate in Virginia today, 9/27/06, incumbent Republican George Allen maintains a slight 49% to 44% advantage over Democrat challenger James Webb, according to a SurveyUSA poll. Since an identical SurveyUSA poll 2 weeks ago, Allen is up 1 point and Webb is down 1 point. BUT: day-to-day data shows that the race is volatile. On Sunday 9/24, after Allen had been accused of using racial slurs in college, he led by 7 in SurveyUSA Sunday-only data . On Monday 9/25, after Allen strongly denied the accusations, he led by 11 in SurveyUSA Monday-only data. On Tuesday 9/26, after more people corroborated the accusations, Allen trailed Webb by 3 points, in Tuesday-only data. The 5-point Allen advantage shown here, when the 3 days of data are combined and averaged, cannot be considered stable.
We often caution people to not read too much into any one survey, and that is advice that still applies. Right here, though, the SurveyUSA analysis ventures into the land of reading too much into a small portion of a single survey. If about 1/3 of the sample was taken each day, then the margin of error for that one day sample is +/- 6.7% per candidate.