A Northern Arizona University poll was released today showing Pederson down by 16 among 403 likely voters. That's an abysmally small sample in a state of more than six million residents. The margin of error for the NAU poll was +/- 5%.

Also today, SurveyUSA released its own poll of the race. Today's SUSA poll results show identical numbers from the poll they conducted a month ago, 48% to 43%. The sample size was only slightly larger than the NAU poll, with 474 likely voters surveyed and a margin of error of +/- 4/6%. Last month when these numbers came out, I posted about the confusing and counter-intuitive crosstabs that showed Kyl far outperforming Pederson in Tucson and Pederson slightly ahead in the Phoenix Metro area, among other areas of topsy-turvy-ness.

This month's crosstabs make much more sense. Pederson is now up by 5 in Tucson & South AZ (Cochise, Pima, Santa Cruz and Yuma Counties) and down by 5 in Phoenix Metro (Maricopa and Pinal Counties). He's down by 18 in the rest of the state, so that's clearly where some more work needs to be done. "Rest of AZ" is also the only region in which Kyl is above 50%.

Also interesting in this month's crosstabs is a "Generation" breakdown. I apparently still qualify as "Gen X". Who knew? Anyway, Kyl is ahead among "Gen Y", "Jones", and "Mature", with Pederson ahead among "Boomers" and virtually tied among "Gen X". I'm surprised that Kyl is doing so well among the younger voters. But what I'm most concerned about is Pederson's deficit among the "Mature" generation. Older voters ALWAYS vote, and Pederson has his largest deficit among them, where he's down by 16%, at 39% to Kyl's 55%. Jim's campaign needs to steal some thunder from that age cohort, and he can do it by going after Kyl's atrocious record on the Medicare prescription drug benefit and his support of privatizing social security.

There are clear openings for the Pederson campaign (he leads by a commanding 28% among "Hispanic" voters - 58% to 30%). I'm disappointed that SUSA did not include the abortion question in this month's crosstabs as they have in the past, now that Pederson opened up that issue with his very powerful and compelling ad (which has prompted me to donate to the campaign).

It does seem at this point that Jim's best chance will come on the ground both with early voting and on election day. And that makes me very nervous, given the GOP track record on GOTV and the AZ Democratic Party's so far very secretive "coordinated ground campaign".