Campaign Diaries

Today, Research 2000 delivered the cycle’s first poll from Washington State, testing Democratic Senator Patty Murray against two potential Republican challengers:

• Murray leads Rep. Dave Reichert 53% to 40%; against Attorney General Rob McKenna, Murray is even further ahead - 55% to 39%.
• While a third of respondents have no opinion of the two Republicans, Murray has a good favorability rating: 55% of respondents have a favorable opinion of the Senator, while 40% have an unfavorable one.

There is no evidence that either Republican will jump in the Senate race. In fact, odds are that Reichert and McKenna both pass on the race. McKenna is known to harbor gubernatorial ambitions, and he is likely to wait until 2012 to seek a promotion. As for Reichert, he represents a blue-trending district in the Seattle area, and he survived two tough campaigns in 2006 and 2008; he is expected to have an easier time in upcoming years, as the environment should not be as favorable to Democrats then as it was over the past two cycles. Would he want to leave the House seat for which he fought so hard to run after such a difficult Senate race? Even if he is thinking about it, the NRCC is sure to beg him to seek re-election instead.

This poll is nonetheless very useful. Once a swing state, Washington has swung decisively to the Democratic column over the past decade and the Republican Party has a thin bench. Reichert and McKenna are probably the strongest candidates the GOP could field, and the fact that Murray remains well above 50% against both of them is a clear sign that she is a solid and popular incumbent. Republicans can always make noise about mounting a competitive run (just as they did in 2004), but Murray is heavily favored to win another term.

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Meanwhile, Marist released a poll of New York’s mayoral race, which takes place in just eight months! The poll finds mixed news for Mike Bloomberg, whose approval rating has collapsed by 17% since mid-October; but 52% of respondents still describe his action as excellent or good, a solid rating that does not leave much opening for Democrats to exploit.

Marist tested the Democratic primary and potential general election match-ups:

• In the Democratic primary, Rep. Anthony Weiner is narrowly ahead of Comptroller William Thompson, 38% to 30%, with city councilman Tony Avella coming in third at 9%. Most polls that have been released for now show Weiner with a similar, single-digit lead over Thompson.

• Bloomberg wins all three of his match-ups by double-digits: 53% to 37% against Weiner, 53% to 36% against Thompson, 57% to 30% against Avella.

• Yet, a full 55% of respondents say it is time to elect someone else; only 40% think that Bloomberg deserves re-election.

The contradiction between the last two findings is stark, but it is also not rare. Incumbents often perform better in head-to-head match-ups than they do in response to a “deserves re-election” query as actual challengers are not known by all voters or they do not correspond to the ideal candidate voters would like to see. In any case, the result is that Bloomberg continues to post solid general election numbes; that he remains above 50% is a good sign for him.

One area of concern for the incumbent is the possibility that he might face more than one candidate in the general election. If the Republican Party decides to punish Bloomberg for having left the GOP and fields a credible candidate of their own, that third contender could eat into Bloomberg’s totals by taking away some of his more conservative supporters. Sure, this is New York, but for a Republican candidate to reach just the high single-digits could give the Democratic nominee an opening.