Tag Archives: Public Policy Polling

Republican Youngkin Notches First Lead in Virginia Gubernatorial Race

By Jim Ellis

Republican Glenn Youngkin, Virginia candidate for governor

Sept. 24, 2021 — A new University of Mary Washington survey (conducted by Research America, Sept. 7-13; 1,000 total sample 528 likely Virginia gubernatorial election voters, live interview & online) finds Republican Glenn Youngkin (R) leading former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), 48-43 percent, but there are caveats.

While virtually every poll has projected the two candidates recording support percentages in the 40s, this is the first that found the ex-governor and former Democratic National Committee chairman trailing. Two other surveys were also released yesterday, and both of them find results consistent with other pollsters that place both candidates in the 40s, but with McAuliffe holding the advantage.

KAConsulting (Sept. 17-19; 700 likely Virginia voters, live interview), polling for the Presidential Coalition, found McAuliffe topping Youngkin, 46-42 percent. Public Policy Polling (Sept. 17-18; 875 Virginia voters, interactive voice response system) derived an almost identical 45-42 percent McAuliffe ballot test result during a simultaneous time realm.

The Mary Washington study may well be an outlier. While the 48-43 percent margin comes from those describing themselves as likely voters in the Nov. 2 election, when responses from all 1,000 sampled individuals are recorded, the ballot test flips to 43-38 percent in favor of McAuliffe. It is not unusual to see differences when screening for likely voters versus the universe as a whole, but detecting a ten-point swing affecting just one candidate – you will notice McAuliffe scores 43 percent within both groups – raises methodological questions.

The poll becomes even more suspect when seeing that the candidates in the other statewide races, lieutenant governor and attorney general, produce no such GOP swing. In the lieutenant governor’s contest, Republican Winsome Sears has a 47-41 percent lead over Democrat Hala Ayala among likely voters, but the two are dead even at 38 percent support when all respondents are added to the ballot test matrix.

In the AG’s campaign among likely voters, Republican Jason Miyares holds a 46-42 percent edge over incumbent Democrat Mark Herring, but the race flips to 40-37 percent in the attorney general’s favor when all respondents are questioned.

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New Poll Again Shows Tight
Numbers in Georgia Senate Race

Georgia freshman Sen. Raphael Warnock (D)

By Jim Ellis

Aug. 11, 2021 — Late last week, Public Policy Polling released their new Georgia Senate findings (Aug. 4-5; 622 Georgia voters, interactive voice response system) and the results place the new Peach State Senate race in familiar territory: a virtual tie.

While PPP finds that freshman Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) leads three tested Republican potential nominees, former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, retired football star Herschel Walker, and three-term state Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, only when paired against Black does Warnock’s edge extend beyond the polling margin of error. This early poll suggests what the conventional political wisdom already predicts, that the 2022 Senate race will again feature a close finish.

To reiterate, Sen. Warnock, though winning his seat only in 2020, must run for a full six-year term next year because he won the special election to fill the unexpired portion of former Sen. Johnny Isakson’s (R) final term. You will remember that Sen. Isakson resigned at the end of 2019 due to health reasons and Gov. Brian Kemp (R) appointed Loeffler to fill the seat until the special election was conducted.

The PPP results find Walker, who has yet to announce (and it’s still even unclear as to whether he will run), in the best position of the three tested potential candidates. In this poll, Sen. Warnock’s edge is 48-46 percent. Loeffler fares comparably with Walker, though slightly worse, trailing 44-47 percent. Commissioner Black, the only officially announced candidate of the group, falls behind by eight percentage points, 38-46 percent.

The favorability indexes provide further clues. Keeping in mind that almost everyone tends to skew negatively on the PPP favorability scores, the two benchmarks, President Biden and former President Trump, score 46:48 percent favorable to unfavorable and 43:48 percent, respectively. Sen. Warnock posts a 43:42 percent job approval score. Walker, obviously exclusively due to the personal recognition coming from both his college and professional football career, has the best result: 41:28 percent. Loeffler fares poorly: 28:47 percent, while Commissioner Black is an even split at 15:15 percent; still, that means 70 percent of the voters don’t have enough information about him to form an opinion.

These numbers provide us with several conclusions: first, Sen. Warnock has yet to establish himself beyond a partisan framework. The 85:8 percent score among Democrats carries his overall positive mark. He records a predictable 6:78 percent mark among Republicans, but perhaps most indicative, just 33:45 percent among those classifying themselves as political Independents.

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Assessing Ohio

By Jim Ellis

April 9, 2021 — Ever since Sen. Rob Portman (R) announced his retirement in late January, the open Ohio Senate race has attracted a great deal of national political attention.

With the first quarter now at an end and Federal Election Commission financial disclosure reports due on April 15, candidates who have found fundraising success in the previous 12 weeks are informally releasing their dollar totals. Such is the case for the major Ohio contenders.

At this point, the Democratic field already seems to be crystallizing. With a weak political bench in the state, the nomination favorite appears to be Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Warren/ Youngstown). Ryan is in even stronger position because a potential opponent, former Ohio Health Department Director Amy Acton (D) – who was actually faring slightly better against the Republican slate than he according to a March 18-19 Public Policy Polling survey – announced last week that she would not run.

For his part, Ryan originally said he would formally announce his Senate campaign in March, but later indicated that he would not be declaring so soon. Seeing that his first quarter political receipts exceeded $1.2 million suggests that he has been working hard on the fundraising circuit, giving us a further clue as to his actual intention.

The up-and-coming potential Republican candidate appears to be six-term Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Columbus). His aggressive fundraising resulted in $1.4 million obtained for the quarter and added to his previous $1 million cash-on-hand figure, gives him a base war chest of over $2.4 million to begin a statewide effort with millions more to come. The congressman says he will make a final decision about entering the Senate race later in the year.

Former Ohio Republican Party chair Jane Timken, however, had an even better fundraising sprint, obtaining just over $2.1 million. Ex-state Treasurer Josh Mandel, who held over $1.6 million in his campaign account from previous campaigns, brought in $1.3 million during Q1 of 2021. Therefore, the GOP top tier contenders are all financially strong. Two other potential entries are author J.D. Vance and US Rep. Mike Turner (R-Dayton).

Stivers, stressing that he has not yet made the decision to run for the Senate, said in an interview with the Cleveland.com news site that, “it’s a huge statement that someone who’s not in the race can outraise announced candidates.”

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Potential Ticket Splitting?

By Jim Ellis

Oct. 14, 2020 — We’ve seen a preponderance of straight-line party voting in the past few elections, but two new surveys testing both the presidential and US Senate campaigns in respective states suggest a split ticket result could possibly occur.

Two polls were released earlier this week, one from Michigan and the other Montana, which find a constant sample plurality that suggests the respondents might vote for different party candidates in the presidential and US Senate race. In both cases, the respective Senate candidate is polling better than the same party’s trailing presidential contender.

In Michigan, Siena College/New York Times surveyed the Wolverine State electorate (Oct. 8-11; 614 likely Michigan voters, live interview) and finds that former vice president Joe Biden leads President Trump, 48-40 percent, but the same sample finds Democrat Sen. Gary Peters leading challenger John James (R) by only a 43-42 percent margin. Therefore, we see a net seven-point swing toward the Republican candidate as the voters move down the ballot.

We see a potentially similar pattern developing in Montana, but the parties are reversed. Here, Public Policy Polling surveyed the Big Sky Country voter sample (Oct. 9-10; 798 Montana voters, interactive voice response system) and notes that President Trump is topping Biden, 52-46 percent, yet in the Senate race, Sen. Steve Daines (R) and Gov. Steve Bullock (D) are tied at 48 percent preference. These results translate into a six-point net swing toward the Democratic candidate after the individual voter professes his or her presidential preference.

Both of these patterns appear unusual for contemporary election cycles that now see sometimes less than five percent of party members straying from their organization’s nominee while Independents follow their own predictable track. This tells us that non-affiliated voters in these two states may be acting more like true independents, which would constitute a relative break in the voting prototypes that have come to the forefront during this decade.

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NC: First Post-Sexting Poll

By Jim Ellis

North Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham’s recent involvement in a sexting scandal has seen polling numbers drop.

Oct. 7, 2020 — On Friday, it came to light, after the announcement that North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis had been diagnosed with COVID-19, that Democratic nominee Cal Cunningham who has been leading for most of the race is involved in a sexting affair with a married woman. The story was carried heavily in media reports on Friday.

Almost immediately, Public Policy Polling went into the field to assess the damage, and while they find Cunningham still holding the advantage it is half the size of the double-digit margin he enjoyed in the previous two surveys.

The North Carolina Senate race has been heavily studied. Just since Sept. 15, we have seen no less than 13 polls released of this Senate contest with Cunningham leading in all.

The new Public Policy Polling survey (Oct. 4-5; 911 North Carolina voters via interactive voice response system) sees Cunningham holding a 48-42 percent lead over Sen. Tillis. Though the margin is six points, the spread is down significantly from the 13- and 12-point advantages he recorded in the two most recent polls from Hart Research Associates (Sept. 24-27; 400 likely North Carolina voters via live interview) and ALG Research (Sept. 22-28; 822 voters, online), respectively.

The PPP data reveals that Cunningham is taking a hit over the budding scandal. When asked whether “the information about Cal Cunningham having a relationship with a woman who is not his wife make you more or less likely to vote for him, or does it not make a difference,” 37 percent answered they are less likely to support him versus three percent who said they were more inclined. A total of 58 percent said the breaking story would make no difference in how they decide to vote.

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The Sleeper Race?

By Jim Ellis

Republican candidate Mark Ronchetti (left) and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-Nambe/Santa Fe)

Oct. 5, 2020 — It seems every election cycle features a surprise Senate contest. This year, that campaign may reside in New Mexico.

For months, it’s been a foregone conclusion that Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-Nambe/Santa Fe) would succeed retiring Sen. Tom Udall (D). Recent polling, however, suggests that Republican challenger Mark Ronchetti may have been discounted a bit too early.

The latest polling trends clearly show a narrowing margin. A new Public Opinion Strategies survey for the Ronchetti campaign (Sept. 26-28; 500 registered New Mexico voters; live interview) finds the upstart Republican climbing to within six percentage points of Rep. Lujan, 46-40 percent.

In June, Public Policy Polling (June 12-13; 740 New Mexico voters) projected Lujan holding a predictable 14-point lead, 48-34 percent. At the beginning of September, the Research & Polling firm tested the state (Aug. 26-Sept. 2; 1,123 likely New Mexico voters, live interview) and saw Lujan’s edge slipping a bit to 49-40 percent. In the middle of last month, POS tested the race two weeks before their aforementioned survey and found an almost identical result when compared to their current offering. The mid-September ballot test yielded a 45-39 percent split.

Mark Ronchetti is a former chief meteorologist for the Albuquerque CBS television affiliate in a media market that covers about two-thirds of the state, since it stretches northward to Santa Fe and beyond. Therefore, Ronchetti has significant name identification, though not in relation to politics.

Rep. Lujan won the state’s northern congressional district in 2008, succeeding Udall when he was first elected to the Senate. Prior to his congressional service, the six-term incumbent was a four-year member of the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Challenge

By Jim Ellis

Is incumbent Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in re-election trouble?

Sept. 18, 2020 — Quinnipiac University surveyed the South Carolina political situation as part of their three-state polling series, which again produces some eyebrow-raising data. The results help identify why Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from a Republican state, finds himself languishing in a competitive contest.

The poll (Sept. 10-14; 969 likely South Carolina voters, live interview conducted by the RDD firm for Quinnipiac) tested both the presidential and Senate campaigns. President Trump leads former vice president Joe Biden 51-45 percent in a ballot test that seems to be an under-count when looking at the survey’s supporting numbers. Sen. Graham, however, falls into a tie with opponent Jaime Harrison, at 48-48 percent, in a result that the underlying responses do seem to support.

President Trump’s six-point lead appears low because he tops Biden on virtually every personal and issue question. The Trump favorability index is 51:45 percent positive to negative, but the Biden ratio is much worse at 43:50 percent. The generic Republican-Democrat number falls 52-44 percent in favor of the GOP label.

Despite poor coronavirus management numbers for the president nationally, this South Carolina survey returns a 49:48 percent approval number on his handling of the issue. Furthermore, the respondents, in a 50-46 percent break, believe President Trump would do a better job handling coronavirus in the future than Biden. Not a particularly strong performance in this issue area, but better for the President than in almost any other place.

Trump also scores better in his handling of the economy (55-40 percent), the military (54-42 percent), and “keeping your family safe” (52-43 percent). Biden is favored, and only barely, 48-46 percent, on just one issue: racial equality.

Most importantly, the issue matrix sets up perfectly for Trump. The top two issues, according to these respondents, are the ones upon which the president is basing his campaign, law and order (23 percent) and bringing back the economy (22 percent). The Biden key issues rate rather poorly: coronavirus (12 percent), racial equality (12 percent), and healthcare (10 percent).

All of these underlying numbers suggest the Trump ballot test margin should be stronger than six points, which could be a signal that there is a “shy Trump voter factor” even in what is typically a safe Republican state. The “shy Trump voter” is the phrase now used to describe the individual who only secretly favors the president.

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