bayh the people

the other day i gave my sister a ride home from work & we were talking about elections. i was a bit surprised when she mentioned that our senator, evan bayh, is up for re-election. i had totally forgotten. admittedly i haven't watched local tv in months, but i had heard nothing recently about the bayh/scott race, no ads, no mentions on the politiblogs, nothing. today i finally saw a yard sign for marvin scott (the republican challenger); i can't recall ever seeing bayh yard signs. & now that i think about it, i do remember hearing some discussion of bayh/scott debates on inside indiana business on npr some time ago, but obviously nothing recently (apparently because there will be no debate).

so today i googled bayh & quickly found this article on WISHtv.com that explains why nobody's talking about this race:

A statewide poll showed Bayh had a 39 percentage point lead with less than a month remaining before the election.

damn, 39 points? hoosiers sure do love them some evan bayh. we gave him two terms as governor & will handily re-elect him to the senate. indiana politics are strange like that: we've had a democrat governor for 16 years now, then sent one of them to the senate, but we're still "solid red" for bush. i still dream of a kerry coup in indiana, but bush is polling consistently in the 50s here. and it's possible we'll lose our democrat governor: the media is reporting their race as a head heat. the only poll numbers i can find are 46 daniels, 43 kernan, which does not bode well considering the incumbent rule. but assuming the massive democrat advantage in new voter registration also applies here, that could be enough to carry kernan to victory. plus that poll is already at least a week old.