Despite a rocky start since winning the Democratic Senate nomination last month, a new poll from the DSCC shows Rep. Joe Sestak (D) comfortably ahead in the matchup with former Rep. Pat Toomey (R).
The DSCC poll, conducted by well-regarded Democratic polling firm Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group last week, shows Sestak leading Toomey by a margin of 47-40 after two weeks in which Sestak has been pounded by Republicans over his statement that the White House offered him a job to stay out of a primary fight with the man he eventually defeated, Sen. Arlen Specter.
That story has dominated national reporting of the Senate race in Pennsylvania, with the White House scrambling to answer questions about the deal, which the Obama administration has said included former President Clinton asking if Sestak would be interested in an unpaid position on a presidential board in exchange for not running. The story has caused an ongoing kerfluffle in D.C., but the new DSCC poll suggests it hasn’t had the same effect on Pennsylvania voters.
From the The Fix‘s report on the poll this morning:
Sestak’s favorable scores are still respectable with 34 percent seeing him in a favorable light as compared to 18 percent who regarded him unfavorably. Toomey, who faced no primary, has similar ratings to Sestak with 30 percent viewing him favorably and 19 percent regarding him unfavorably.
Those numbers suggest that roughly half of voters haven’t formed an opinion of any sort about either man — meaning that the campaign each runs will matter in the final outcome.
The poll also suggests that the surge in support that began for Sestak a couple weeks before the primary with Specter has continued in the wake of Sestak’s upset victory. Sestak surprised some national Democrats with the way supporters seemed to line up behind him in the primary once they knew he was a candidate. One Pennsylvania Democratic source told me at the time that Sestak’s compelling personal story — as broadcast in a feel-good intro ad in the final weeks of the primary — was at least as responsible for Sestak’s surge over Specter as that infamous “reelected” ad was.
Toomey, meanwhile, who led both Democrats in polling leading up to the primary, now finds himself in a tight race with the candidate most Republicans were hoping would be the Democratic nominee. His supporters say that Sestak’s progressive voting record makes it easy for them to tie him to conservative bogeymen like President Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
There’s a lot of campaign left before either man is proven right. But for the time being, it seems Sestak has reset the contest with this primary win.
The TPM Poll Average for the Pennsylvania contest shows the race to be a dead heat, with Toomey drawing 39.7% of the vote and Sestak drawing 39.2%.
