… though you’d never know it from the article on WJAR’s website.

Quest Research’s Victor Profughi is out with his first new survey for WJAR since the much-criticized poll he did last month showing Frank Caprio with a huge 12-point lead over Lincoln Chafee. Though conducted just three weeks apart, the results are strikingly different.

what a difference 3 weeks makes

Caprio’s big lead, unseen in any other poll, has vaporized into a statistical tie that puts him just four points ahead of Chafee, 37%-33%. John Robitaille’s support has grown from 13% to 22%. And the number of undecided voters has collapsed from 23% to just 6%. None of this is mentioned in WJAR’s write-up.

Snark aside, the new results belatedly put WJAR/Quest right in line with what we’ve seen in both Rasmussen’s polls and our own WPRI/Fleming one. This race is close, and it’s staying that way.

I also find it intriguing that even as other candidates saw huge shifts between the two Profughi polls, Caprio’s rating barely budged from 36% to 37% – meaning almost all the newly “decideds” went to Chafee and Robitaille. What does that tell us?

Profughi polled the 492 likely voters early last week, Oct. 4-6. Without seeing the crosstabs – which I presume will be released after the Cicilline-Loughlin results come out – it’s hard to say what changed Profughi’s findings so drastically in just three weeks.

In an e-mail to me last month, though, Profughi mentioned that he wished he’d pushed harder to see whether self-described undecided voters actually had a preference. And in an online chat last night, he said he used three screening questions to determine whether respondents were likely to vote next month.

Profughi also noted that doing a good poll is expensive, saying “the fact of the matter is that someone has to cover the costs. [WJAR partner Rhode Island College] contributes nothing to these polls, a lot of it is donated costs coming out of my hide, and the balance is being picked up by WJAR.” He also said he plans to conduct one more poll around Halloween – around the same time our final WPRI/Fleming poll will be released.

Update: Weird. The Projo released WJAR’s results for the Cicilline-Loughlin race this morning – even though the station still hasn’t done so, as far as I can tell. Profughi’s new poll has Cicilline with 47% to Loughlin’s 36%, with 13% still undecided, according to The Journal. [Scratch that; Profughi had said the Cicilline-Loughlin results wouldn't be out until today, but it turns out they were buried in the governor's race write-up last night.]

The paper didn’t say how many 1st Congressional District voters Profughi polled. Last month, our WPRI/Fleming poll of 250 likely voters showed Cicilline at 48%, Loughlin at 29% and 22% still undecided.

Update #2: The Cicilline-Loughlin results are already on Profughi’s site, too. He also lists the three screening questions he used to figure out who is a “likely voter”: are you registered to vote; do you vote in elections “always, almost always, or most of the time”; and will you “very likely” or “probably” vote in the Nov. 2 election. Since all the results are now out, I’ve e-mailed Profughi to request the crosstabs.