Political Eye blog: Pollster hit the mark on Berkley loss to Heller in Senate race

Let the record show, pollster Mark Mellman was right on the money again in predicting the outcome of a U.S. Senate race in Nevada.

Although Rep. Shelley Berkley's campaign didn't make Mellman's internal polling public heading into Tuesday's election, Mellman said Thursday that his nightly tracking for several weeks showed her losing to U.S. Sen. Dean Heller by a 1 to 2 percentage points.

And that's exactly what happened. To be specific, the Republican Heller won 45.91 percent of the vote and the Democrat Berkley got 44.69 percent -- a 1.22 percent GOP victory.

The race was a nail biter, ending well past midnight and ending Berkley's political career.

Before the election, public polls showed Heller leading Berkley, including those commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Two SurveyUSA polls had the race at 46-40 for Heller.

In October, to counter the impression that Berkley might lose, her campaign released a Mellman poll that showed her edging Heller 41-38. But that survey was taken nearly one month before Election Day and before the race began to shift toward Heller, Mellman said.

"The truth is our polling was dead on accurate, even more so than the RJ's," Mellman wrote in an email Thursday. "It is true that a poll we did October 8-10, about one month before the election, had Shelley up 3 points. You will also note that we never released any further information even though we continued tracking each night. That's because we fell behind.

"Indeed, we were consistently 1-2 points behind for the last couple of weeks, and our final track was exactly where we ended up-a bit more than one point down," he added.

Mellman didn't release his final exact numbers on the race, but would only discuss the margin. He said there were still 1 to 2 percent undecided voters right up until Election Day. He had "none of these candidates" and a third party contender getting about 4 percent each, which was also on target.

In a phone interview, Mellman said the Berkley loss was tough to take.

"Shelley's not only a client, but a dear friend of mine of long standing," Mellman said. "I really take this very hard and very personally. I will forever be upset about it. I couldn't be sorrier."

Two years ago, Mellman was the only pollster who accurately predicted Democratic leader U.S. Sen. Harry Reid's re-election victory over Republican Sharron Angle. Reid won by 6 percentage points, while most public polls showed him going into Election Day 4 points down, including one commissioned by the Review-Journal.

This year, Mellman also hit the target on the presidential race in Nevada. He said his polling showed President Barack Obama winning the Silver State by 6 percentage points over his GOP challenger Mitt Romney. In the end, the Nevada vote was 52-46 for Obama, a 6-point victory.