mhasten@lafayette.gannett.com

BATON ROUGE -Two polls released this week that show Bobby Jindal of Baton Rouge has moved ahead of Kathleen Blanco of Lafayette in the Louisiana gubernatorial race are "suspicious" but may be right, political analysts say.

There's a natural inclination to discount the results of the polls because they were conducted for the Republican Governors Association and Jindal's campaign, said Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, and Wayne Parent, head of the political science department at LSU.

"My sense is that it's a dead heat right now," Cross said. "I'm distrusting some of the polls. I trust the ones that say it's very close."

"One is always suspicious of polls coming out of campaigns," Parent said. "But these might be correct."

The association's poll of 601 registered voters performed by Voter Consumer Research on Oct. 21-23 shows Jindal with a 48 percent to 43 percent lead over Blanco. Nine percent of respondents were undecided.

Jindal's poll, in which The Anderson Group surveyed 500 "likely" voters Oct. 20-21, shows Jindal with a 43 percent to 38 percent lead and 19 percent undecided. The pollster said the survey has a 4.3 percent margin of error.

"They might be good, but I'm always reluctant to accept polls that are done for campaigns," Parent said. "Jindal is picking up momentum, so they might be sound."

Parent said two other independent polls to be released today could show different results, or they "might confirm these polls. Right now, we're at the toss-up stage."

A memo from The Anderson Group to the Jindal campaign says "Kathleen Blanco's attack strategy is not working, or at least not yet, anyway."

It also cautions Jindal about the effect of not responding. "While the current strategy of not counterattacking Blanco seems to be working, we need to stay vigilant in monitoring this," Anderson said.

"Like it or not, sustained attacks that go unanswered usually work eventually."

A negative campaign is more likely to turn off women voters, the memo says. The Anderson poll shows Jindal leading by two points among women, with 41 percent favoring him to 39 percent favoring Blanco.

The poll shows both candidates have the same 43 percent net favorable response among voters - Jindal 60 percent favorable, 17 percent unfavorable, and Blanco 59 percent favorable, 16 percent unfavorable.