Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Most candidates anonymous for now

One aspect of this fall's elections that perhaps has not received as much play as it should with all the focus on national trends is that most of the actual human bodies running for Governor and Senate across the country are largely unknown within their states so far.

We've polled on 34 non-incumbents running for Senate or Governor since mid-April. 22 of them are unknown to more than 40% of the voters in their states. Only 6 have greater than 70% name recognition and out of those 3 have already served as Governor of their states (Bob Ehrlich, Terry Branstad, Jerry Brown), one is Mayor of the biggest city in the state (John Hickenlooper), one currently represents half the state in Congress (Paul Hodes), and the other, well, he's found ways to increase his name recognition for better or worse (Rand Paul.)

The current standing of a lot of these races is being driven by national trends, for now. But candidates matter and when voters start really paying attention and actually getting to know who these folks are there's a high potential for some of these races to take a different turn. That could end up being good news for Democrats in the long run. Let's face it- it's going to be a brutal year if all these contests end up just going with the tide. But a lot of folks in the party are optimistic that when Ohio really gets to know Lee Fisher and Rob Portman and that when Pennsylvania really gets to know Joe Sestak and Pat Toomey, for a couple of examples, that they're going to end up deciding they like the Democrats better.

If the PA-12 and NY-23 special elections had just been determined by the national winds there'd be Republicans in those seats right now- but Democrats proved to have superior candidates and superior campaigns and ended up pulling off a couple good wins. They have to hope that as voters get to know the candidates better in other races across the country this year that the trend continues.

Here's the 'no opinion' numbers on challengers we've polled across the country:

Rodney Glassman

Dem

AZ

Sen

78

John Stephen

Rep

NH

Gov

68

Vincent Sheheen

Dem

SC

Gov

67

Ron Johnson

Rep

WI

Sen

62

Elaine Marshall

Dem

NC

Sen

58

Ken Buck

Rep

CO

Sen

57

Bill Brady

Rep

IL

Gov

56

Rob Portman

Rep

OH

Sen

53

Dan Onorato

Dem

PA

Gov

53

Roxanne Conlin

Dem

IA

Sen

52

Tom Corbett

Rep

PA

Gov

50

Carly Fiorina

Rep

CA

Sen

48

Alex Giannoulias

Dem

IL

Sen

46

Mark Kirk

Rep

IL

Sen

46

Nikki Haley

Rep

SC

Gov

45

Lee Fisher

Dem

OH

Sen

45

Joe Sestak

Dem

PA

Sen

43

John Kasich

Rep

OH

Gov

42

Tom Barrett

Dem

WI

Gov

42

Pat Toomey

Rep

PA

Sen

42

Kelly Ayotte

Rep

NH

Sen

42

Jack Conway

Dem

KY

Sen

40

Scott McInnis

Rep

CO

Gov

39

Bill White

Dem

TX

Gov

38

Charlie Melancon

Dem

LA

Sen

37

Scott Walker

Rep

WI

Gov

36

Terry Goddard

Dem

AZ

Gov

34

Meg Whitman

Rep

CA

Gov

32

Paul Hodes

Dem

NH

Sen

28

Jerry Brown

Dem

CA

Gov

24

Rand Paul

Rep

KY

Sen

24

Robert Ehrlich

Rep

MD

Gov

22

Terry Branstad

Rep

IA

Gov

21

John Hickenlooper

Dem

CO

Gov

20

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