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Gov. Mitch Daniels leads former Congresswoman Jill Long Thompson 50%-36% according to an internal Daniels campaign poll. The Bellwether Research poll of 1,000 likely voters has a margin of error of +/- 3% and was conducted June 22-29. (Read the polling memo here.) Internal polling data are typically only released publicly for fundraising or publicity purposes, and are therefore notoriously susceptible to distortion (a recent independent SurveyUSA poll gave Daniels a 50%-45% lead). But strikingly, even if the data represent Daniels’s most optimistic positioning ahead of the November election, they continue to paint a worrisome picture for the Republican incumbent. Daniels continues to struggle to pass the traditional 50% reelect barrier that characterizes a competitive race. And after months of paid television advertising, Daniels’s reelect number lags behind two other seemingly favorable metrics: though 57% of voters approve of the job he’s done, and 55% view him favorably, only 50% support his reelection. The data suggest that Daniels’s most difficult challenge is not the candidacy of Long Thompson, but an electoral environment that is increasingly inhospitable to Republican candidates in general. The memo takes pains to distinguish voters’ impressions of Indiana’s progress from the nation’s–"Hoosier voters are making a clear distinction between the progress Indiana has seen in the past several years and the worries they may have about the nation’s economy or direction," it says–but those distinctions are less important in Presidential election years. And the campaign’s numbers already suggest that a significant portion of the November electorate will be new Democratic voters; in its poll, 13% had voted in their first primary in May. Daniels will struggle to win these voters (the memo claims an advantage amongst them, but it is statistically unreliable), and if Senator Barack Obama continues to invest in Indiana, they will constitute a potentially historically large portion of the electorate. Though the memo points to an approval rating of 55% amongst political independents, as the number of first time voters portends, more Hoosiers are identifying themselves as Democrats and fewer as Independents, making the figure less significant. Daniels spokesman Cam Savage cast the poll as good news. "Whether it’s cutting and capping property taxes, attracting tens of thousands of new jobs, balancing the state’s budget, or providing health care for the uninsured, Hoosiers have responded to the Governor’s leadership. But regardless of results, no poll will affect how hard Mitch Daniels will work in this campaign," he said. For Jill Long Thompson, there is room to grow but with little time to do so. The poll supports what HPI reported after the Democratic convention and continues to plague the Democrat’s campaign—that the party has yet to coalesce around her candidacy. According Daniels’s data, just 60% of Democratic voters are supporting Long Thompson. That Daniels hits only 50% with nearly half of Indiana Democrats witholding their support for Jill Long Thompson indicates that this race is sure to tighten as Election Day approaches. Long Thompson spokesman Jeff Harris responds: "This poll should be an outlier…every poll we’ve seen, both internal and external, has shown this race to be neck and neck. "The interesting thing is that this is a poll from the governor’s campaign and it still shows over half of Hoosiers aren’t happy with his leadership. It shows he’s in an incredibly weak position. Our campaign hasn’t really started on paid media and we still have an incredible opportunity to grow "This poll should give a lot of concern to Daniels’s campaign. I think he’s spent about three million dollars on television and his numbers haven’t moved."
Tags: Jill Long Thompson, Mitch Daniels
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This entry was written by and posted on July 3, 2008 at 4:30 am and filed under Indiana Polling Center. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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