A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 41 percent would vote for their district’s Republican candidate while 38 percent would choose the Democrat. Thirty-one percent of conservative Democrats said they would vote for their district’s Republican candidate.

Overall, the GOP gained two points this week, while the Democrats lost a point in support. Still, it’s important to note that the GOP’s improved position comes primarily from falling Democratic support. Democrats are currently at their lowest level of support in the past year while Republicans are at the high water mark.

The thing is, you don’t hear as many Republicans citing these polls as you did in February, because we have new data: the special election in New York’s 20th Congressional District. No serious political operative thinks that the Republicans are gaining ground and the Democrats are losing it. If that was the case, the Republicans would have picked up that upstate New York seat.

That win will send a powerful signal to the rest of the country … that our game is not up.

You can’t be right all the time.

UPDATE: Steele has sent out an official statement to reporters, which includes this line:

Jim Tedisco ran a tough but an ultimately unsuccessful race in a district that has been carried by a long line of Democrat candidates including President Obama, former Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, Sen. Clinton, Sen. Schumer and former Gov. Spitzer.

That long line goes all the way back to. .. 2004, when Schumer rolled over token Republican opponent Howard Mills, whom he out-spent by $14.8 million. This is a purple district that voted for George W. Bush twice, something Steele knew when he staked his credibility on the seat.

Jim Tedisco submitted a petition to the Dutchess County Supreme Court Thursday asking the judge to declare him the winner of the extremely close special election race, despite the numbers currently being in favor of his opponent, Democrat Scott Murphy.

This is a nice way of saying Murphy got more votes than Tedisco. Murphy currently leads by 178 votes, after trailing by dozens of votes before the absentees started being counted. Tedisco really can’t act like such a sore loser and expect to come back in 2010: voters typically turn on candidates who refuse to admit defeat, such as Christine Jennings in a 2006 Florida congressional race that was marked by the loss of votes in electronic machines.

When Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s absentee ballot came up in the queue, the poll watchers for Jim Tedisco objected to it, saying the senator was in the county on election day and should have voted in person.

About an hour ago I got an e-mail from the Republican National Committee informing me that, in Minnesota, “more than 4,400 voters remain disenfranchised because judges ignored equal protection concerns and the facts from Election Day.” So what’s the party’s position on counting absentee ballots? For or against? I really can’t figure it out. Tossing the junior senator from New York’s ballot in the trash is probably a bad move either way.

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The measures that [President Obama]‘s taken don’t seem to me to be the measures that would be needed to an economy that’s in a serious recession… In a situation like this, you don’t spend more money, you don’t spend historic amounts of money, you reduce the amount of money that you’re spending. you reduce government spending… pretty much across the board make major reductions, get your expenses down.

This is what was tried, with disastrous results, by President Herbert Hoover’s administration.

Smith notes that Giuliani thinks his “stance on the stimulus would likely be a campaign issue” if he made a comeback and ran for governor of New York. This seems wrongheaded after Republican congressional candidate Jim Tedisco blew a 20-point lead running an anti-stimulus campaign against Democrat Scott Murphy, in a district that had been safely Republican until 2006.

Don’t let the Democrats steal this election. Less than 80 ballots separate Republican Jim Tedisco and his Democrat opponent. We cannot afford to allow the Democrats to steal this election.

We need your support to ensure we can overcome the Democrats’ legal maneuvers.

Democrats have almost succeeded in stealing the election in Minnesota and seating Al Franken. We cannot allow them to manipulate electoral results to seat another tax-troubled liberal.

But the Al Franken pitch makes you wonder: Are Republican voters eventually going to get tired of shelling out money for recounts? They’ve given already given $1.3 million in Minnesota.

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While both parties threw the mud, the national Republican effort behind Tedisco’s ads has been looser with the truth and has taken a more deeply negative cast from the beginning, and that’s how the general electorate is seeing the campaign. That was quite clear in the Siena poll results: Voters see Tedisco as more negative than Murphy, and they don’t like it.

If I may beat a dead horse: Tedisco’s problem is that he responded to the backlash by denouncing negative ads and pledging to run a positive campaign. First, the national GOP committees ignored Tedisco and kept running their ads. Second, once the AIG bonuses outrage blew up, Tedisco changed gears and started attacking Murphy over a scandal voters simply didn’t connect him to.

I will be voting for Scott Murphy on Tuesday. While we disagree on some important issues, I find him to be a man of honor, a good family man and successful businessman. Unlike Tedisco, he actually lives in the District. And, unlike Mr. Tedisco, I view Scott’s business success as a virtue, not a vice.

I urge my supporters and all those who believe in open and free elections to show their disgust at the tactics of the Republican political machine to win at all costs. Please join me in voting for Scott Murphy on Tuesday.

This isn’t bad news for Murphy, who is leading Tedisco while Sundwall picks up 2 percent in the polls, but it’s hard to tell where Sundwall’s voters will go. He was winning 2 percent of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—no one knows how they’ll break between Tedisco and Murphy.

Democratic candidate Scott Murphy – 47 (+6)
Republican candidate Jim Tedisco – 43 (-2)
Libertarian candidate Eric Sundwall – 2 (+1)

Murphy has moved ahead by consolidating the support of Democrats and taking 27 percent of Republicans from Tedisco. Tedisco has actually gained ground among independents, but it hasn’t been enough to stop a bleed in his own positive numbers — Tedisco is widely seen as running a dirty ad campaign. Also helping out Murphy: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s approval is at 76 percent, and President Obama’s approval is at 65 percent, and both have endorsed Murphy and lent their images to ads for him.

What’s this mean? Well, the election is on Tuesday, so we’ll know more then. But it suggests that the attacks on Murphy for 1) saying he would have voted for the stimulus, which meant he would have accidentally supported the AIG bonus loophole and 2) being a rich investor have not worked for Tedisco. The Republican had criticized the negative ads in the race and promised to run a positive campaign. Then the AIG bonus story broke, and he and the NRCC pounded Murphy over the story. It hasn’t borne fruit, according to this poll.

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