I asked Joe Mallahan's campaign to comment on the new (and conventional-wisdom bucking) KING 5 poll that came out yesterday. As opposed to earlier polls which had Mallahan showing comfy leads (44-36, 43-36), the new poll was a statistical dead heat—45-43, Mallahan leading Mike McGinn.

The Mallahan camp says the new KING 5 poll oversamples young voters (18-34-year-olds)—the only bloc that favors McGinn (49 to 33 percent.)

Eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-olds make up 25 percent of the sample. Here's the bad news for McGinn: KING 5's final primary poll had 18-34-year-olds at 22 percent, but in reality, they only made up 15.6 percent of the vote.  A stat that indicates younger voters will underperform again (or at least not come out at 25 percent) is this: Currently, 18-34-year-olds are only making up 17 percent of the vote when you cross reference King County's current returns (which include voter ID numbers) with the Democrats' voter file.

The senior-citizen vote is compounding the problem for McGinn. Seniors (65 and up) are going for Mallahan 52 to 39 percent. However, KING 5 seems to be undersampling this bloc—at 20 percent of the vote. In reality this bloc has is currently at 27.5 percent of the vote.

KING 5 undersampled this Mallahan bloc in their final primary poll as well. KING 5 had them at 22 percent of the vote, but they showed up at 25 percent.

I called the McGinn camp to get their take on all these numbers, and McGinn's campaign manager Aaron Pickus said he didn't have time to dish the counter spin. "Honestly, I'm in the middle of a room of phone bankers right now, and we're just getting out the vote."