Tuesday, July 17, 2012

PPP: U.S. Senate Candidates "Running in Place"

I could almost copy and paste from older blog posts to write this one.

One again, there was a new poll in New Mexico  by Public Policy Polling, a company openly sympathetic with  the Democratic Party, though their results don't always favor the Dems and they have a good track record for accuracy.

Once again, the PPP poll shows Martin Heinrich, the Democrat, beating Republican Heather Wilson by a small margin. 48 percent polled favored Heinrich, 43 percent said they'd vote for WIlson. Those percentages are the same as the last PPP poll in April.

And once again, the Wilson campaign is complaining that the poll is skewed because Democrats were "oversampled" in the survey.

The firm surveyed 724 New Mexico voters in automated phone interviews between Friday and Monday. The margin of error is 3.66 percent, PPP says.

One interesting find: Both candidates are in negative territory in favorability  ratings. 39 percent have a favorable opinion of Heinrich, but 40 have a negative opinion. With Wilson, the numbers are 38 percent favorable and 49 percent unfavorable.

But besides the Senate race, the company released the first public numbers on the 2014 gubernatorial campaign -- and those numbers look good for incumbent Republican Susana Martinez.

Despite all those news stories about the private emails, etc., the poll shows the governor with a 56 percent approval rating with 34 percent disapproving.

Attorney General Gary King, the only announced Democratic candidate for governor in 2014, has a 30 percent approval number with 34 percent disapproving.

State Auditor Hector Balderas -- who some Democrats have touted as a possible candidate -- had ratings of  34 percent approving, 20 percent disapproving.

According to the poll, Martinez would beat King 51 percent-39 percent and would defeat Balderas 50 percent - 37 percent.

UPDATED: 5:43 pm I screwed up the favorability ratings of King and Balderas in the original version of this post. The above text has been corrected. (Thank, Sterling F.)