Tulchin poll shows Dunlap at 50 and LePage at 46 in ME-2; our forecast holds

A new Tulchin Research survey of 500 likely voters in Maine's 2nd District, fielded October 12-14, has Democrat Matthew Dunlap at 50 percent and Republican Paul LePage at 46 percent. That is a close race in that poll, not a clear lead for either candidate.

Our model gives Dunlap a 91 in 100 chance of winning the seat, unchanged from our run at 10:32 AM ET today. Our projected mean margin moved from D+10.8 to D+10.9. Our model's range for the result, from the 5th to the 95th percentile, stays at R+2.3 to D+24.1. The new poll confirms what the forecast already showed rather than changing it.

The margin in the Tulchin survey is narrower than our model's mean margin. The model weighs it alongside other inputs, and one survey of 500 voters was not enough to shift the estimate. On October 2 this site reported an earlier Tulchin poll that found a two-point race. The new survey shows a four-point gap, and our forecast has stayed near the same level across both.

Nationally, our model gives Democrats a 99% chance of winning a House majority, which takes 218 seats, with a mean of 245.1 Democratic seats. Our generic ballot average stands at D+8.2 across 37 polls from the past 45 days. Our House simulation correlates error nationally, by census division, by state and within each district. It does not correlate demographically similar districts in different places, because we lack the data to do so. That makes our House control probability somewhat firmer than it would otherwise be.