The Missouri Senate race was supposed to be close, and it was for a while, but not anymore. McCaskill has led in 7 consecutive polls, and 10 of the 12 conducted in October, so the trend is clear. But their is another peculiar trend that may prove far more decisive; the strategic release of internal/partisan polls. There have been 40 publicly released polls so far in the Missouri Senate race; 23 from the traditional polling firms, 13 are partisan and just 4 were sponsored by a media entity.

The internal/partisan classification is assigned to any poll that is either commissioned on behalf of a candidate's campaign (internal) or sponsored by an overtly partisan entity such as a PAC or a lobbying group. In Missouri, there have been 7 such polls conducted by entities aligned with Democratic candidate Claire McCaskill:

Democratic Affiliated/Internal Polls

The affiliations are self explanatory with the possible exception of Majority PAC; it's basically the unofficial PAC of the Democratic Party. The remaining 6 polls were conducted in either September or October and were strategically leaked; probably by the McCaskill campaign in all cases. The main takeaway for now should be that McCaskill leads in all 7 by an average of just over 10%.

There are then 6 internal polls from the Republican side in association with Todd Akin:

Republican Affiliated/Internal Polls

Akin's campaign itself has only released one poll, but their pollster Wenzel Strategies has conducted 3 additional polls on behalf of Republican affiliated organizations. The other 2 polls were sponsored by the Missouri Scout a private news service; the site is run by Dave Drebes, a member of the Republican machine in Missouri. These 6 polls date further back to August and favor Akin by a smaller margin, at just slightly under 3%.

While it's not entirely unexpected that partisan polls favor a certain candidate, the magnitude of this bias and the timings are curious. No internal poll is actually leaked; they are released with purpose to coincide with external events. If an internal polls isn't favorable in some way, it won't get released. So keeping this in mind, why has the Akin campaign released two polls earlier this month, but none since? The McCaskill campaign has actually released 4 polls since the last Akin poll, each showing McCaskill with a double digit lead. Why has their been no response by the Akin campaign?

I don't think the Akin campaign has anything worth releasing. It makes absolutely no sense to sit on good data if you have it, and the absence of a new internal release seems to imply they don't have it. The Akin campaign is losing and their own polling agrees.

I'm calling the Missouri Senate election for McCaskill (D).

Updated on October 30, 2012 at 8:47:42 PM CT