Kaine-Allen Senate “Poll” FAIL

Earlier today, the Kaplan Post reported on a new “poll” by Roanoke College on the U.S. Senate race between George Allen and Tim Kaine. The reason I put “poll” in quotes?  Check out this update from the Post:

Washington Post Polling Director Jon Cohen warns to be cautious of the Senate race numbers from this Roanoke College poll. Results were adjusted only for gender, and the resulting sample is not representative of Virginia’s racial composition, its age structure or regional population densities. Each of these factors is related to partisan preferences.

As if that’s not bad enough, the poll had a tiny sample size of just 360 people, with a wide margin of error. Also, just using common sense, there is no way in he** that either Allen OR Kaine are leading the other one by more than a few points right now. That’s just not credible, given how closely Virginia’s divided, how tight the Webb-Allen race was in 2006, what Kaine’s and Allen’s favorability ratings are (see below), etc. Other than that, it’s a great poll — not. FAIL!

P.S. A poll by the consistently excellent Public Policy Polling back in November 2010 had Kaine’s favorability at 43/40, compared to 40/41 for Allen. And in a head-to-head matchup, Kaine led Allen by 6 points, 50%-44%. That certainly seems a lot more “in the ballpark” than this strange Roanoke College “poll.”