The Public Policy Polling organization released a poll yesterday about the Mississippi Senate race. It should be noted the poll was computer-generated. PPP stated:
It has been three weeks since voters in Mississippi gave incumbent Senator Thad Cochran a victory over State Senator Chris McDaniel in a runoff election but voters are still deeply divided over the general election with no candidate receiving more than 40% support in the latest PPP poll.
Cochran has the most statewide support, in a Senate race featuring Cochran, Democrat
Travis Childers and Reform candidate Shawn O’Hara Cochran leads with 40/24/5.
However in this race 31% of the electorate, apparent McDaniel supporters, are
undecided. In a race where McDaniel replaces Cochran as the Republican nominee
Childers narrowly leads the race over McDaniel 37/36/4 with 24% of the electorate
undecided.Cochran is shown to still win handily, but the results showcase the deep
divisions in the state. Only 39% of Republicans in Mississippi approve of Cochran while
51% have a favorable opinion of McDaniel. Continuing the trend from the primary
Democrats across Mississippi continue to support Cochran, 58% of Democrats approve
of Cochran and 31% of Democrats say they would vote for Cochran over Childers in the
general election.
Exactly 50% of statewide voters believe that McDaniel should concede the primary, but
44% of Republicans believe that McDaniel was the real winner of the runoff election.
Additionally 39% of Republicans think that McDaniel should not concede the race to
Cochran. The poll also revealed several interesting demographic results. Cochran enjoys
vast African American support with a 59% approval among African American voters in
Mississippi. In the general election 37% of African American voters said they would
support Cochran compared to 36% for Childers, 3% for O’Hara and 25% undecided....
17 comments:
Halleluiah. We finally realize the "Big Tent" without the votes from the nut baggers and kooks.
Looks like Gregg Harper's Senate campaign could be falling apart.
and looks like Chris McDaniel's career HAS fallen apart.
When the knowledge of how many AAs support Cochran becomes widespread, won't the McDaniel supporters crossover to Childers?
"When the knowledge of how many AAs support Cochran becomes widespread, won't the McDaniel supporters crossover to Childers? "
Anything to get away from AAs, eh?
10:46 probably will. As short sighted, country and provincial as they are, it wouldn't be surprising at all.
Cochran won't get 10% AA vote Nov.
I didn't know so many members of Alcoholics Anonymous supported Cochran, but it's not a surprise that those with sober judgment would.
If only leftist leaning Public Policy Polling was reputable!
Unless I missed it with these old eyes, I didn't see how many were polled. That's " like" kinduv important. They could have chosen a certain area. No one called me. Polls can capture certain audiences.
You missed it. If you do the work to look for it you'll find the sample data but, to one of your points, there was no geographic breakdown which in Mississippi is becoming pretty important on election day.
Regardless of their lean PPP is reputable.
The PDF from PPP has breakdown-numbers by whether those surveyed voted for Obama'12 or for Romney'12, which are quite revealing. Among the Romney voters (which I will henceforth shorten as "repubs") about 47% believe Cochran won the runoff, but 45% believe McDaniel won the runoff. This is as of last weekend, 7/10 to 7/13.
Among the Obama voters (henceforth "dems") it is 76% to 11%, either because they support Cochran more, or because they follow the post-June twists and turns less avidly, I cannot say. PPP survey-population ... which as mentioned above we don't know the counties but there were 691 Mississippi voters total ... claims that 19% of dems (Obama voters) participated in the 6/24 r-runoff, which is roughly 72k voters if it holds broadly true. PPP survey-population also shows that ~38k voters were AA and ~34k were caucasians that voted for Obama. The AA dems broke 77/23 for Cochran, but the caucasian dems broke 83/17 for Cochran.
PPP did NOT ask what percentage of the survey-population voted in the 6/3 d-primary and also the 6/24 r-runoff... dern media conspiracy! ;-)
Given that 45% of repubs believe that McDaniel was the actual winner, it is not unsurprising to find that 42% of all repubs believe that McDaniel should not concede yet. Doing some back-of-the-envelope math (always risky when one cannot see the raw survey-data), it looks like about 25% of McDaniel-voters have given up, which means about 18% of Cochran-voters are willing to see the investigation through to the end, at present.
Cochran's popularity among repubs is 39% favorable and 53% unfavorable. McDaniel is 52% favorable and 39% unfavorable, among repubs. No typos here. Cochran is still predicted to win in November... due to 58% or 60% favorable rating from dems. (Dems give McDaniel just 5% favorability at the moment, but they also do not believe he won the runoff, so that number may shift, depending on the legal outcome in August.)
Shockingly, to me anyway, Haley Barbour is 52% favorable and 34% unfavorable (slightly better than McDaniel). Not as shocking, among Mississippi repubs Obama is 96% unfavorable; possibly a record.
"Cochran's popularity among repubs is 39% favorable and 53% unfavorable. McDaniel is 52% favorable and 39% unfavorable, among repubs. No typos here. "
Thanks for doing all the heavy lifting with the math, but GIGO applies here. I don't buy those two conclusions at all.
4:36, yes, the percentages you get out, highly depend on which 691 people PPP spoke to! But for that survey-population, at least, Cochran is having approval-issues (and McDaniel is about as "popular" as Haley... that spells yikes no matter how you slice & dice the numbers).
I would like to see more polling done in MS, but unless there is an actual election-challenge-lawsuit (as opposed to the current lawsuits which are trying to get more and/or cheaper access to the election-materials), we may not get it. Certainly, there was not enough polling prior to 6/24. At the least, I do expect there will be another approval-poll for Cochran before November at some point. Will be interesting to see what the numbers show, a few weeks from now.
Yeah, when there is a bitterly contentious primary with both camps negative, they both come out with high negatives but then a point comes when the focus turns to the general election and primary loser fades into the background. This is nothing new, except that McDaniel won't fade away voluntarily. But the press and the public are ready to move.
5:20, you cannot just baldly say that 100% of the public (aka we the people) are ready to "move on"; especially when PPP data says otherwise.
Now, there is truth to the idea that the *press* is ready to "move on", as long as you mean the MSM like the Clarion (KF is also press... just way more informative). MSM folks are conflicted: they want to make dems look good, and they especially like to make repubs look bad, which means they love to see team Cochran repubs saying tea == racist, and they also love to see team McDaniel repubs saying runoff == fraudulent. So I would argue that even the mainstream press is gonna keep giving coverage... with spin to their advantage, naturally.
The longer-term question is, what is a tough-but-fair primary? Before MS'14, the tea-Cruz vs estab-Dewhurst 2012 runoff in Texas was what I would have called bitterly contentious & strongly negative. Just before that runoff, Cruz was at 53/16/32 fave/unsure/unfave among likely-repub-runoff-voters. Dewhurst was a bit worse off, at 50/11/39, but fully 50% of repub runoff voters were still *approving*.
By contrast, McDaniel at 3 weeks after this runoff was at 51/10/39 among repubs. This is estab-Dewhurst-level popularity, not tea-Cruz, but is still above 50% positive among repubs. Cochran, by contrast, was at 39/09/52 among repubs... way under water. The only other PPP data is from Nov'13, when Cochran managed 47/17/36 among repubs, which is close to estab-Dewhurst levels.
The difference between TX'12 and MS'14 is this: although Cruz and Dewhurst both made pretty strong accusations about the other candidate's positions/record, and both claimed the other criticism by the opponent was "inaccurate" aka liar-liar-pants-on-fire, neither one of them lost their basic decency. Calling the other guy racist, and saying they want to keep minorities from voting? That's not "bitterly contentious" it is flat-out sick; Henry Barbour finally owned up to this evil, via Quin Hillyer of NRO. Trying to 'prove' the other guy is an adulterer is also in the same category, evil, but at least team McDaniel was not involved in funding that crap that I have seen, nor at *any* point in tacitly backing such behavior once it came out -- as McDaniel said, repeatedly, the tactic was reprehensible. Haven't heard Cochran say that about his PAC-funded adverts, eh? Senator Portman apologized for his part of *indirectly* funding team Cochran which is a decent gesture.
About the only thing that comes ANYWHERE close to MS'14 is the estab-Murkowski vs tea-Miller insanity in AK'10. When tea won the r-prime over estab, approval-numbers were finally polled: 57/11/32 for tea-Miller (Cruz-level) and 47/06/47 for estab-Murkowski (Dewhurst-level). But as it turned out, Murkowski ran as a write-in, and in the very evil "general election" campaign she fell all the way to 31/06/63 among repubs, and held tea-Miller to 62/06/32 (min gain). Back in Feb'10, Murkowski had 77/10/13 approval among repubs! Cochran, similarly, had 74/12/14 approval among repubs, back in Nov'11. Murkowski never got back above 50% approval in her home party: she was most recently at 34/11/56 in mid-May'14. Cochran also will prolly never fully recover among MS repubs.
From his social-media postings, McDaniel is aware he *may* end up like Miller in AK... or for that matter like Gore in FL... unable to ever run again. McDaniel thinks fighting for his beliefs trumps realpolitick (proves beyond a doubt that McDaniel is surely a Cruz-type repub). But the jury is still out, quite literally: if McDaniel is destined to end up unpopular, the PPP numbers are not showing any such decline, so far. I don't think we'll know one way or the other, until the challenge-lawsuit is filed, and the final extent of the hard evidence is known.
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