Campaign Diaries

The third poll of Pennsylvania’s Senate race was released today by Rasmussen, and the results are dismal for Arlen Specter. He trails former Rep. Pat Toomey - now officially in the race - by an eye-popping 21%. Adding insult to injury, Toomey manages to cross the 50% threshold - a rare feat for a challenger in polls conducted this early in the cycle.

Specter’s favorability rating - 42% to 55% among Republicans - does not look that catastrophic until one realizes that we are talking about the Senator’s base. Voters tend to have a favorable impression of incumbents from their own party, making a 42-55 showing rather pathetic. The good news for Specter: Independents and Democrats do not have a worse opinion of him than Republicans, which allows him to keep decent numbers overall. The bad news for Specter: He has to win the Republican primary.

Not only is he strikingly unpopular among Republicans, but his adversary is well-known and well-liked: 66% of Pennsylvania Republicans say they have a favorable impression of the former representative, while 19% say they have an unfavorable one. Worst still, Rasmussen’s survey is similar to last month’s Quinnipiac poll, which found Toomey leading 43% to 27%. (That same day, F&M released a survey finding Specter ahead, but that survey had a small sample size and a large MoE.)

Put all of this findings together, and it is hard to understand why Specter thinks he can win a Republican primary.

Voters have made up their mind, it will be hard to get them to change it

If he is already down to 31%, where in the world is he going to find the extra 19%? The fact that incumbents have little room to grow is what makes it so important for them not to trail early on - and that problem is even more acute for very well-known politicians like Specter. In his 2004 primary against Toomey, Specter did not trail in a single poll; the closest survey had him leading by 6%; yet, the Senator survived by less than 2%. The same principle applies now: We should expect undecided to break towards Toomey, and polls could understate the motivation of conservative voters.

In office since 1980, Specter has been a high-profile politician for nearly three decades - and he already angered conservatives in the 1980s. In fact, his 1987 vote against Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court has probably been one of his most important breaks with his party. It is clear that a large plurality (perhaps even a majority) of Pennsylvania Republicans no longer think of Specter as one of their own - and this rejection derives from voters’ familiarity with the Senator.

In these conditions, how can Specter possibly hope to convince Republicans that he is conservative enough to win their support? Anything he does can easily be dismissed as election year posturing and thus backfire against him. His opposition to EFCA is in obvious contradiction with Specter’s past support - and he did not even bother ruling out supporting the bill in future sessions (which conveniently happens to be after his face-off with Toomey). He is now refusing to say whether he will support a filibuster for Obama’s nominee to the OLC Dawn Johnsen; even if he does, can that make-up for his vote against Bork?

Thus, Specter is in a lose-lose situation: Either he votes further to the right than he is accustomed to and allows Toomey to attack him as transparently unprincipled or he stays true to his usual voting record and he becomes such an easy target that Toomey would not even have to bother campaigning.

Who will testify to his conservative credentials?

Another big problem for the Senator is that he has very few establishment allies left. In 2004, President Bush and Senator Santorum (both popular among conservatives) pushed and pulled him to the finish line - but there is no such prominent Pennsylvania GOPer today. In fact, Roll Call reports high-profile Republicans are already abandoning Specter: In 2004, most of Pennsylvania’s Republican delegation supported the Senator but today, all seven say they are undecided!

I expect many of them to remain on the sidelines all the way to the primary - and that would be disastrous for Specter: He needs fellow Republicans to testify on his behalf, bear witness to his conservative credentials. He cannot simply run on the electability argument - after all, concerns over the GOP’s ideological identity look far more pressing today than they did six years ago.

The better polls are for Toomey, the more top-tier Democrats will look at the race

One last reason that these early polls showing Toomey in the lead could spell trouble for Specter is that Democrats are sure to take notice. For now, only two Democrats have announced their candidacy, and neither is considered a top-tier candidate: Joe Torsella, who I have already written about, and state Rep. Bill Kortz, who just announced his candidacy this week to the great surprise of Pennsylvania observers.

Democrats like Reps. Allyson Schwartz and Patrick Murphy look intimidated at the prospect of challenging Specter. But if Toomey continues to be favored to win the primary, Democrats like Schwartz and Murphy will be more willing to jump in the race since they’ll expect not to have to face Specter. Thus, even if the incumbent does end up beating Toomey after all, he would be guaranteed a competitive general election… against a Democrat who did not expect to face him!