yesterday, wthr released some surprising poll results. in indiana's 7th district, their poll shows eric dickerson up three points, 45-42. the last poll of the district had carson up 20 points, 55-35. this is a massive shift, which is peculiar considering that dickerson has almost no media presence, which suggests that something is wrong with one or both of the polls.

what makes it all the more suspicious is that the same poll shows brizzi ahead of kennedy 51-35 in the prosecutor's race. while it's not strange that brizzi would be ahead, what's bizarre is that this is again a huge shift from previous polls, which had things about even (for example, kennedy ahead 43-42). so while the poll results for each race are surprising in themselves, when taken together, they get even more suspicious: 20+-point swings in favor of republicans, in a year when people nationwide are so disgusted with the GOP that democrats seem sure to take back one if not two houses of congress? in a year when 3-4 of indiana's republican congressmen are in serious danger of losing their seats? it's improbable to say the least.

of course, julia historically doesn't poll well and yet she still manages to win:

In 2002, a poll taken just before the election showed Carson with only a 1 percentage point lead over Republican Brose McVey. She won, 53 percent to 44 percent. And in Carson's first congressional campaign in 1996, a poll taken just before the election showed her trailing Republican Virginia Blankenbaker by three percentage points. She won by eight.

tdw pokes some holes in the poll results:

• TDW has been told that the sample for the poll favored Republicans by 7 percent, despite the fact that John Kerry won Marion County in 2004.
• The Seventh District was a much smaller sub-set of the whole sample.
• The entire sample was only 19 percent African-American, compared to the estimated 23-27 percent of the county who are African-Americans of voting age.
• The pollsters called randomly selected listed numbers, which excludes those who do not have land lines or who have unlisted numbers.

tdw also posts a curious campaign email she just received.

rishawn biddle also analyzes trends in the race, but he's skeptical whether the poll results are really accurate, and even if they are, he's unsure whether dickerson can pull off a win. rishawn says, "Considering that [the Dickerson campaign] hasn't been nearly as savvy as it needs to be given what is at stake, this means stepping up the game. Fast."

tully analyzes the race and makes the curious claim that dickerson has been running a clean campaign and has "remained positive". steph mineart takes him to town for his naivete:

WHAT? This campaign is the dirtiest, slimiest one I've ever known, and it's not coming from Carson's end. I'm sorry -- Dickerson is slinging more than any candidate I've ever seen, but it't not mud he's slinging -- it's shit, plain and simple.

He's feeding libelous allegations and smear tactics to the IndyUndercover site (which is run not by cops or sheriff's officers, but by the Republican Party -- current investigation points toward Ike Randolph as the responsible party) and to Gary Welsh of Advance Indiana. Go to these site and read what they're saying about Julia Carson.

They're alleging she stole someone's wallet, for pete's sake. Tell me that's not shit-slinging. Tell me that's positive campaigning.

dickerson's campaign (or at least his supporters) have been unleashing "lollapalooza '99"-sized tidal waves of mud for months. i generally don't read indy undercover, but gary at advance indiana has been spewing all kinds of nonsense about julia, and the commenters there are even worse. furthermore, while tdw won't confirm it (because she swore to stop "outing" her commenters by pointing out where they're posting from), operatives from the dickerson campaign, posting from campagin hq dickerson's failed buick dealership, no less, infested her blog comments for some time, defending dickerson at every opportunity and generally defaming julia. (this person used to post comments as "someonewhowouldknow"; i don't know if they stopped commenting, which seems unlikely, or just stopped going by that name.)

if anything, dickerson's surrogates have been slinging far more mud than carson's. the only difference is that julia has been personally linked to the mud-slinging (it has been reported that she told the star ed board about dickerson's domestic arrest), while dickerson gets to maintain plausible deniability. that doesn't mean his campaign has been anything resembling clean; he just relies on people like gary welsh and jocelyn-tandy adande to do his dirty work for him.¶

Oddly enough, "someonewhowouldknow" stopped posting after I informed Dickerson at a blogger forum that the IP address from those comments routed back to his failed Buick dealership.

He got pretty flustered when I brought that to his attention. ¶