Polls show Senate dead heat

The Quinnipiac and F&M polls out today show a dead heat between Joe Sestak and Arlen Specter. From the AP:

The Quinnipiac University survey gives Mr. Specter a 44 percent to 42 percent edge. The sampling error margin is 3.2 percentage points. Fourteen percent are undecided.

The Franklin & Marshall survey gives Sestak a 38 percent to 36 percent edge. The sampling error margin is 7.9 percentage points. It shows about one in four are undecided.

Today's Muhlenberg/Morning Call poll has them tied at 45-45. Sestak had been up by 5.

At PoliticsPA, chief Specter cheerleader Ed Rendell says he's "surprised" by Sestak's surge:

“I am surprised,” Governor Ed Rendell said during a Tuesday press conference in the Capitol. “I am surprised at the depth of the anti-incumbency feeling.”

The state’s chief executive, himself an avid Specter backer, cited the recent loss of three-term incumbent U.S. Sen.  Bob Bennett of Utah in a GOP convention vote as evidence of how restless the electorate is with incumbents. The senator won’t even be placed on the ballot in the GOP primary in the state, to be held in June.

Specter, the state’s longest serving public official, is “shouldering some of those blows” from voters fed up with incumbents, he said.