Pennsylvania Miscellaneous

-Pennsylvania Republicans might need to do a really good job with their redistricting next year in order to hold onto the seats they won last fall. Voters in the state say if there was an election for Congress today they'd go for Democratic candidates by a 42-36 margin on the generic ballot, suggesting the party could very well win back some of the stuff it lost last year.

It's interesting to see Democrats with a 6 point generic House ballot lead, given that this same poll found Barack Obama with dreadful approval numbers at 42/52 and struggling in match ups with Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum. Obama polling poorly while things are looking up for House Democrats has actually been a theme throughout our April polling though. We've found Democrats leading on all three national generic Congressional ballot surveys we've done this month, even as we've also found Obama's approval numbers hitting record lows.

Usually you would expect the fortunes of both the President and House Democrats to be headed in the same direction but at least for this month that has not been the case. Voters are just responding negatively to everyone who's in charge and the unhappiness is cutting across party lines to affect both Obama and House Republicans.

-Pennsylvania voters may warm back up to Arlen Specter and Ed Rendell some day but apparently three months out of office has not been enough time to win them any forgiveness. Only 33% of voters in the state have a favorable opinion of Rendell to 55% with a negative one. Republicans (81%) are a whole lot more unified in their dislike of him than Democrats (50%) are in their favor and independents split against him 26/58. Specter's numbers tell a pretty similar story. 32% of voters have a favorable opinion of him to 53% with a negative one. He has the same problem as Rendell of Republicans (77%) disliking him a lot more than Democrats (46%) like him and independents go against him by a 24/57 spread.

-There's been a fair amount of speculation that another run for statewide office might be in Joe Sestak's future and if there is he'll have a lot of reintroducing himself to do to the voters. A plurality of voters, at 37%, now say they don't know enough to have an opinion about Sestak either positive or negative. Those who do have one are divided almost evenly with 32% rating him favorably and 31% unfavorably.

-63% of Pennsylvania voters support some form of legal recognition for same sex couples to 35% who think there should be none. The 63% breaks down 30% who support full marriage rights and 33% who favor civil unions. Even Republican voters by a 51/47 margin support either marriage or civil unions for gay couples.

Full results here