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Poll has Whalen in the lead

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By Ed Tibbetts | Wednesday, October 4, 2006 8:22 PM CDT | () comments

TODAY: (Updated 12:24 p.m.) A new poll released today shows Mike Whalen leading congressional rival Bruce Braley by 13 points.

Whalen, a Republican, and Braley, a Democrat, are seeking Iowa’s 1st District congressional seat.

The new Reuters/Zogby poll, conducted Sept. 25 to Oct. 2, says Whalen leads Braley 47 percent to 34 percent.

In a statement, Russ Perisho, Whalen’s campaign manager, said the poll shows voters are responding to the Bettendorf businessman as an outsider who would “upset the apple cart in Washington.”

Jeff Giertz, a Braley spokesman, dismissed the poll, noting a Constituent Dynamics/RT Strategies survey released last month showed Braley leading by 13 percentage points. Also, a Des Moines Register survey conducted a few weeks ago showed Braley leading by seven points.

“It’s not consistent with anything we’ve seen,” Giertz said.

The 1st District race is one of 15 that Zogby and Reuters polled. And the news from it, for Republicans, was mostly bad.

Democrats are leading in 11 of the 15 key districts, the poll said.

Iowa’s 1st is one of the few exceptions.

Democrats need 15 seats to win control of the House.

Five hundred voters in each of the key districts were polled, and the survey has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.

Reuters noted that the poll overlapped news of the e-mail scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Florida, by a few days. Foley resigned after being confronted about e-mails he sent to underage congressional pages.

Ed Tibbetts can be contacted at (563) 383-2327 or etibbetts@qctimes.com.