Early yesterday, I posited that Dede Scozzafava's withdrawal from the race in NY-23 might hurt Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman.  The basic idea is this:  If you are a conservative living in NY-23, you're probably already lined up behind Hoffman.  Scozzafava and Democrat Bill Owens were probably mostly splitting the moderate-to-liberal vote at this point.  These voters may well conclude that their views are more closely aligned with Owens' than with Hoffman's, and pull the lever disproportionately for the Democrat.  The fact that Scozzafava endorsed Owens lends some credence to this viewpoint.

A new poll from PPP casts some doubt on this hypothesis.  The poll went through several question iterations, due to the fast-moving sequence of events over the weekend, but the results are unequivocal:  In a three-way race, Hoffman leads Owens 51%-34%, with 13% for Scozzafava.  Hoffman leads 54%-38% in a head-to-head matchup with Owens.

Owens may well be getting the bulk of Scozzafava's support. The 2-way matchup numbers indicate that Scozzafava's voters lean at least somewhat toward Owens  - but if Hoffman is above 50%, it doesn't matter.  Moreover, PPP finds that Hoffman is winning among Independents 52%-30%, and is even receiving 21% of the Democratic vote.  PPP emphasized that there were no significant differences in the numbers at any point over the course of the weekend.

Of course, this is only one poll, and Siena and DailyKos/Research2000 were showing a much tighter race than PPP was showing before Scozzafava's withdrawal (see all NY23 polls here).  If Siena and R2000 have the correct partisan breakdown (and it's worth noting that R2000's partisan breakdown mirrored the registration breakdown in the district, which seems unlikely in an off-year-special-election), then Hoffman may still be in real trouble.