UNH poll puts Dunlap up six in ME-2; our forecast eases to 87 in 100

A University of New Hampshire survey of 622 likely voters in Maine's 2nd District, fielded September 17-21, has Democrat Matthew Dunlap at 51 percent and Republican Paul LePage at 45 percent.

Our model now gives Dunlap an 87 in 100 chance of winning the seat, with a mean margin of D+9.9 and a 5th-to-95th percentile range running from R+4.7 to D+24.5. That is a small move down from the previous run earlier today, which had Dunlap at 90 percent, a mean margin of D+11.5 and a range of R+3.1 to D+26.1. The direction is worth noting only because of where the poll sits relative to our average: at six points, it is narrower than the margin our model had been projecting, so it pulled the estimate in slightly even while showing Dunlap ahead.

It is also wider than the district numbers this site has written about in the past ten days, which showed a one-point gap and a tie. Three polls pointing at three different margins is the ordinary condition of a House district this close to an election, and none of them has changed the shape of the forecast: Dunlap has been the favorite in every run, and the 13 percent chance our model assigns LePage is consistent with a race whose plausible outcomes still include a narrow Republican win.

Nationally, our model gives Democrats a 98 percent chance of winning a House majority, with a mean of 245.7 seats against the 218 needed. One caveat is ours to own: our simulation draws correlated error nationally, by census division, by state and by district, but we have no data to correlate demographically similar districts across state lines. Without that term, the 98 percent reads marginally firmer than a fuller accounting would produce.