The most amazing spin of the day.

Ken Boyd's press release is without question the most amazing of the week , even more than Verga's.

Let's examine it.

Read the release and then our comments at the end.

Boyd-Hurt statistically tied among conservatives

Presumptive front-runner falls to 22 percent, as his general election prospects look grim

Ken Boyd has broken away from the rest of the Republican field and is now on pace to pass presumed front-runner Robert Hurt for first place in Virginia's 5th District sooner than expected.  Boyd is already in a statistical tie with Hurt among the conservative voters who make up most of the 5th district and GOP primary voters.  Hurt continues to cling to a small, shrinking lead due to a 25% lead among liberals and 17% lead among moderates, according to a poll released by an independent polling firm that was rated as the 2nd most accurate pollster in the country by the Wall Street Journal on November 6, 2008.   "While we certainly always expected Ken Boyd to be the nominee on June 8, we have been pleasantly surprised at how quickly voters have come to support Ken," said campaign spokesman Paul Wright, after reviewing the new polling results released this morning.  "As soon as voters learn that Senator Hurt supported the largest tax increase in Virginia's history while Ken Boyd used his lifetime of financial experience to help cut the Albemarle County budget by almost 8 percent last year, Ken Boyd wins this nomination by double digits.  Obviously, voters are starting to find out even before we send out our first mass mailing or run our first ad."   Boyd's December poll showed he had already taken the lead among the most active Republicans and conservatives and pulled within 23 to 10 percent among all possible primary voters.  At that point, he had already pulled ahead to second place, with all other candidates in the low single digits.   Further, the December poll showed that as soon as voters learned that Hurt supported the largest tax increase in Virginia's history while Boyd was able to cut bureaucratic spending, Boyd surged to a 43% to 27% lead to easily win the primary. "It was obvious that it would just be a matter of time before Ken Boyd passed Senator Hurt, but even we are surprised it is happening this fast," Wright said. "We are benefitting from the fact that 78% of the voters have rejected Washington trying to dictate a nominee that would have difficulties in the general election.  We have a long way to go, but it is clear that most 5th District Republicans don't believe Robert Hurt can win in the fall with Democrats pounding on him for supporting billions of dollars in tax increases, and some are starting to believe that Ken Boyd has the best chance to beat Perriello in the fall." Boyd surges despite Hurt's DC-backing, big money    Poll shows Hurt could get only 12% in general if nominated In December, one campaign went so far as to issue a press release questioning whether Boyd could already be as strong as his poll indicated.   However, the first independent poll of the campaign by Public Policy Polling (PPP) shows Boyd has gotten even stronger.  The poll released this morning showed Boyd has already closed the gap to only 22% to 12%, a 3 point improvement in just over a month in which Hurt received strong support from many DC-based organizations that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars being given to his campaign.   Perhaps even more important, none of the other candidates have topped 4 percent yet, which offers the possibility that the majority of voters in the "anyone but Hurt" camp could unify around Boyd as their best chance to prevent Hurt from being the nominee and give Boyd a lopsided win.   Yesterday, in the first day of a two-day release of it's results, PPP released results showing that Hurt would receive only 12% of the vote in the general election if his nomination led to Virgil Goode entering the race as an independent in response to a Hurt nomination.   Goode polled as the most popular person in the district by a wide margin, with 58% having a favorable impression of him, and only 29% a negative impression, compared to 42%-46% for Perriello.  Goode will be the special guest at a Ken Boyd fundraiser in Goode's hometown of Rocky Mount on Tuesday.   ###

Let's go through this wonderful spin piece.  


Boyd keeps on talking about statistical wins.  They aren't real.


Hurt has 20% of the conservative vote and Boyd has 13.  How is that tied ? 52% oF conservatives are undecided. So if you throw undecideds out Hurt would lead that group 40-26.


? Boyd has broken away ?  


Hurt has broken away from him, not just in this poll, but in fundraising (293 K to 50K) and every other measurable way including facebook friends (1171 to 127). Boyd is breaking away in what he is paying his consultant, supposedly 8K a month ++ and with only 20K on hand as of 12/31,he is in financial trouble now.  He is, other than Verga, the only person to have sent out mail at this point and he sent out a very nice and expensive piece. Boyd's numbers should be much higher.


Hurt has a lead among liberals ?


Read the cross tabs. Paul Wright has and he is only mentioning part of the story. They only polled 2% liberals which works out to 8 people called of 400.  So out of 400 Hurt got 3 votes and Boyd got 1.  The best misleading spin in the whole release maybe. Talk about a statistical dead heat. One person switching from Hurt to Boyd and it would have been break even in liberals. 


The December Boyd finaced poll was a push poll that never asked whether you would support Ken Boyd if you knew he had voted repeatedly for raises in school board budgets and to make you cut your grass when a county inspector told you to.  What would Ken's numbers have been if people had been asked those push questions ?


Unify around Boyd ? I guess that is why the other candidates called for a sit down meeting and a conservative convention and in both cases leaving Boyd out ?  


And trying to use Virgil's coming to a Franklin County event like it is an endorsement ? Virgil was recently at a McKelvey event there and is reportedly doing them for others as well.  


Worst spin of the week- without question.  Ken you are going to lose all credibility on any release if you keep this up.  I would hope to hear that you had not seen and approved this before Paul Wright sent it out.  If you did, you will match Tom Perriello as a spin doctor.