An October 11 Rocky Mountain News article by Chris Barge -- “O'Donnell thinks strategy against Perlmutter working: New poll appears to show Republican gaining on Dem” -- reported that Republican congressional candidate Rick O'Donnell said that he thought "[t]hings might just be going as planned after all." That was partly because, the News reported, a “new poll puts O'Donnell only 6 percentage points behind Democrat [Ed] Perlmutter in the race to replace Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez in suburban Denver's 7th Congressional District.” This, the News reported, was “a marked improvement over the 17-point Perlmutter lead shown three weeks ago by a Survey USA poll."

But now that SurveyUSA has released a new poll showing Perlmutter leading O'Donnell by 16 percentage points, 54-38, will the News report that O'Donnell no longer “appears” to be “gaining on Dem”?

The November 2 edition of the News did not mention the latest 9News/SurveyUSA poll. Released the morning of November 1, the poll interviewed 589 “likely” voters from October 29 through October 31 and had a 4.1 percent margin of error.

The October 11 News article referred to an October 3-7 Mason-Dixon poll sponsored by The Denver Post that showed Perlmutter leading O'Donnell by six percentage points, 45 percent to 39 percent. The News article reported that result was a “marked improvement” for O'Donnell over the September 21-25 SurveyUSA poll that showed Perlmutter leading by 17 percentage points.

The same News article also reported that O'Donnell said “he thinks he is on track to be within 3 points by Election Day.” The article then added, “At that point, he said he's convinced that his well-oiled Republican get-out-the-vote machine will put him over the top.”

The article reported that “O'Donnell drove by the darkened campaign headquarters of opponent Ed Perlmutter on Monday night then pulled up to his own headquarters about a mile down the road,” adding, “The lights were on. His volunteers were working.”

From the October 11 Rocky Mountain News article by Chris Barge, “O'Donnell thinks strategy against Perlmutter working”:

Rick O'Donnell drove by the darkened campaign headquarters of opponent Ed Perlmutter on Monday night then pulled up to his own headquarters about a mile down the road.

The lights were on. His volunteers were working.

And a new Denver Post poll showed he was gaining on Perlmutter.

Things might just be going as planned after all, the Republican said he thought to himself.

The new poll puts O'Donnell only 6 percentage points behind Democrat Perlmutter in the race to replace Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez in suburban Denver's 7th Congressional District.

That's a marked improvement over the 17-point Perlmutter lead shown three weeks ago by a Survey USA poll.

Now, O'Donnell says he thinks he is on track to be within 3 points by Election Day. At that point, he said he's convinced that his well-oiled Republican get-out-the-vote machine will put him over the top.

[...]

Perlmutter's campaign thinks O'Donnell is overly optimistic.

Perlmutter's lead is actually bigger than the latest poll shows and his popularity with independent voters will carry him to victory on Nov. 7, spokesman Scott Chase said.

[...]

He [O'Donnell] held up a copy of the 38-page book he's been distributing to voters, outlining his positions on the issues. “This is penetrating,” he said.

“We did what we needed to do over the past six weeks to get where we are today,” he added.