For Maryland, For Our Future, the pro-slots ballot committee, released the results of its latest internal poll this afternoon and found 58-38 support for the November gambling referendum. That's exactly the same level of support the question got the last time the group polled on it. The memo from pollster Frederick S. Yang is generally very upbeat (as you'd expect anything the pro-slots side releases would be).

Those numbers are a pretty marked contrast with the latest independent polling on the subject, the September survey by Gonzales Research and Marketing Strategies, which found a narrow 49-43 plurality in favor of slots.

Until some other polls come out, it'll be hard to know what to make of this result. It could be that one of the surveys is flat-out wrong, a simple case of a pollster finding what his clients want to hear, or something more complicated.

The previous Gonzales survey came out right in the middle of a tussle over the wording of the ballot initiative, when anti-slots groups were making the case that the O'Malley administration was overreaching in crafting language emphasizing the purported benefits of slots for education and not mentioning hundreds of millions that would go to the gambling and horse racing industry. This new survey comes in the middle of a pretty well funded advertising push by the pro-slots side and amid a deepening state budget crisis that reinforces the pro-slots message of solving Maryland's structural deficit without raising taxes. It would not be a stretch to think that the enviornment might have been better for the anti-slots message in September and might be better for the pro-slots side now.