Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: Don't believe the Scott Brown hype

Leading Off:

•NH-Sen: Like the small state it's in, the University of New Hampshire receives outsized attention when it comes to politics. Thanks to their regular polling of a state that often hosts contested elections (not to mention its first-in-the-nation presidential primary), UNH has ensured that political observers will always talk about the data it churns out, justified or not.

And it's not justified. UNH is one of the worst pollsters out there.

That didn't stop traditional media reporters from breathlessly declaring that New Hampshire's Senate race, which Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen has had well in hand for some time, was suddenly a "dead heat" when UNH released a new survey Thursday evening showing her up just 46-44 on Republican Scott Brown. (Remember him? The former Massachusetts senator who seems to have a hard time remembering he's carpetbagging to a different state?) And boy, check out UNH's trendlines!

The problem, though, is that no other reputable pollster has shown the race that close all year. In fact, here's what things look like without UNH in the mix:
Now, UNH's numbers are a bit fresher than what's out there, so it's worth asking whether anything has dramatically changed in this race since last month, when UNH found Shaheen up by a 50-38 margin. But Andy Smith, who runs UNH's polling center, barely even tried to offer an explanation for this huge shift, claiming that Shaheen's campaign was being "being weighed down by national politics, particularly the declining popularity of President Obama." Say what?

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