The McClatchy-MSNBC poll that I mentioned last night is now out. Mason-Dixon is the pollster. Here’s a handy chart.
The takeaway from this polling is that Montana and Rhode Island are surprising dead heats, Missouri and Virginia are too close to call, and Harold Ford is struggling in Tennessee.
As for the role of race in the Tennessee contest:
The poll suggests that a Republican ad mentioning that Ford attended a Super Bowl party attended by Playboy playmates and featuring a white woman telling Ford to “call me,” hurt Ford. A whopping 81 percent of likely voters saw the ad.
While 67 percent said it would have no effect on their vote, 23 percent said it made them more likely to vote for Corker and 10 percent said it made them more likely to vote for Ford.
Let me emphasize, those polled who admitted that the ad affected their vote broke to Corker by a ratio of more than 2-to-1. That’s no acccident.
