United Liberty
Internal polling shows Mourdock tied with Lugar
Thu, 04/19/2012 - 12:20pm | posted by Jason Pye
It looks like it just got real for Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN). As you know, the 30+ year Senator is locked in a tough primary battle against Richard Mourdock, who is running to his right and has received the backing of several prominent conservative groups. Recent polls have showed Lugar holding a small lead ahead of the May 8th primary. However, a new internal poll from Mourdock shows the Lugar down by a point, though inside the margin of error:
With the primary less than three weeks away, Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock is in a statistical dead heat against Sen. Richard Lugar, according to the results of a poll conducted for his campaign that were released on Wednesday. Mourdock leads Lugar 42 percent to 41 percent in a survey that was taken on Monday and Tuesday.
Mourdock’s slight advantage is well within the margin of error, but it represents a departure from most of the public polling taken on the race, which has mostly shown Lugar with a lead.
Forty-seven percent of respondents said they had a favorable opinion of Lugar while 39 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion of him. Forty-six percent said they held an favorable opinion of Mourdock while 22 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion.
Again, it’s an internal poll, so you may want to approach that carefully. While internal polling does give candidates an idea of where they’re at in a race, I’ve always found them to slightly overstate a candidate’s strength. But with Mourdock running on Lugar’s abysmal fiscal record, the incumbent is, for some reason, talking about the Obama Administration selling weapons to foreign governments — miles away from what most Republican voters in his state are concerned about.
Lugar’s been running negative ads almost exclusively, and the latest two are particularly nasty. Not what you’d really expect from a 36 year incumbant. It tells me he feels he can’t run on his own record as a Senator. I.e., after 6 terms in office, the only thing he can run on are nasty, personal attacks against his opponent. He doesn’t even run against his opponent’s positions on the issue; he runs against the opponent.
The only positive thing about himself I can remember him saying in an ad is he’s against Obamacare. That would be a big deal if every other candidate in the US running for a Republican nomination, from president to dogcatcher, was not also against Obamacare. In other words, it’s assumed, so if that’s the only positive thing you can say about yourself, then it’s time to step aside.
I’ve cast my last vote for Lugar. I’m voting for Mourdock in the primary, but if Lugar does somehow win, I’m voting for Donnelly in the Fall. Lugar’s time is past.
Post new comment