Down for the Count?

If you're a long time reader of this site, you know there's no one we like more than Rep. Chris "the Count" Chocola (R-IN) from Indiana's 2nd congressional district, one of the premier Social Security bamboozlers nationwide.

Now, last week a poll came out showing Chocola trailing his rematch challenger, Democrat Joe Donnelly, by a margin of 48% to 38%. But it was a poll commissioned by the Donnelly campaign by Cooper & Secrest, a Democratic polling firm. There's no one who'd like to see Chocola reap the rich reward of his years of bamboozlement more than I would. But Chocola's managed to hold on by relatively decent margins in the last couple cycles (54% to Donnelly's 44% in 2004). So I figured I'd believe it when I saw it. That is, when an independent pollster produced numbers anything like that.

Well, here we are.

Over the weekend pollster Delair Ali of Research 2000 took another sounding on behalf of the South Bend Tribune and he came up with Donnelly 46% to Chocola's 41%.

The sample size was relatively small -- 400 likely voters. So the margin of error is 5%.

But I think we can take this as a rough confirmation of Cooper & Secrest's earlier results. Not as extreme maybe. Five percentage points rather than ten. But if the challenger's got a 5% edge in mid-July, Chocola's in serious, serious trouble.

(ed.note: Special thanks to TPM Reader AM for the heads-up.)