Below The Beltway

Nate Silver digs into the details of the latest Siena poll in search of answers:

Consider the Siena poll out this morning, which has all sorts of useful cross-tabs. Scozzafava’s supporters in this poll:

– Have a favorable view of Barack Obama by a 64-31 margin.
– Have an unfavorable view of Hoffman 15-57.
– Have an unfavorable view of Democrat Bill Owens, 19-50.

It’s not quite so clear how Hoffman stands to benefit from this. Although a majority of Scozzafava’s supporters are Republican (about 62 percent, by my reckoning), it is safe to assume that they are mostly rather moderate Republicans, because almost all the conservative Republicans had already gone over to Hoffman. To wit, two-thirds of Scozzafava’s supporters say they like Barack Obama. While moderate Republicans are an endangered species elsewhere in the country, that is not true in upstate New York, where a lot of voters are registered as Republicans and vote that way in statewide races but often vote Democratic in federal races. (NY-23 supported Barack Obama 52-47 last November.)

The reality is that a lot of Scozzafava’s ex-supporters, many of whom don’t like either Hoffman or Owens, simply won’t vote. And some of them will still wind up casting their ballots for Scozzafava undaunted, as she’ll still appear on the ballot and may have made herself something of a sympathetic figure.

(…)

If I had to guess, I’d think that of Scozzafava’s support, one-quarter of people don’t vote, one-quarter vote for Scozzafava anyway, 30 percent defect to Hoffman and 20 percent defect to Owens. Extrapolating from the morning’s Siena poll, that would produce a result of Hoffman 43, Owens 42, Scozzafava 5, with 10 percent of the voters still up for grabs.

In short, this race is far from over yet and Hoffman could still find himself on the short end here.

My prediction ? I’ll release that Wednesday morning around 9am.