Poll shows Webb, Good in virtual tie
Nearly half of Republicans surveyed impressed by Democratic candidate
For two decades the Fifth district has voted reliably for Republican congressional candidates, but the 2020 election is far from decided. Last week, a poll of more than 500 voters by the public relations and research rm, Global Strategies Group (GSG), found Democratic candidate Dr. Cameron Webb neck-andneck with Republican Bob Good.
With 95 percent con dence and a 4.4-point margin of error, the internal poll showed Webb trailing Good by a mere two points, with 42 percent of the vote compared with Republican’s 44. “Even half of Republicans (48 percent) and two-thirds of white non-college voters (66 percent) — groups that have been so challenging for Democrats to win in recent years — say Webb’s pro le is motivating, underscoring his broad appeal,” GSG states.
And not only that, but the poll also reports “two thirds of voters (67 percent) including a majority of voters from all age groups, genders, races, regions of the district, and education backgrounds report they would be motivated to vote for a candidate with Webb’s pro le in the general election.”
Thirteen percent of voters say they have not yet made up their minds about which candidate to choose. “The fact that this many people [87 percent] have already made up their minds is significant,” said Angie Kue er, Senior Vice President of Global Strategies Group.
“But I wouldn’t necessarily see that 13 percent as noteworthy, maybe a little low for a congressional [race] but not signi cantly lower than we might expect.”
GSG also found Biden on Trump’s heels in the Fi h, with 45 percent favorability compared to the president’s 47 percent. Kue er said that the fact that Biden is down by only two points is “incredibly noteworthy.”
“With 13 percent of voters still undecided,” GSG said, “there is plenty of room for growth. And importantly, undecided voters are even less favorable towards Trump than the electorate overall . . . suggesting Webb may have the edge.”
CHANGES IN POLLING
A er the 2016 election — when key state polls failed to accurately predict voting behaviors — a survey by The Hill found that the majority of the public lost con dence in polling data and experts began analyzing where they went wrong. GSG Vice President Angie Kue er says pollsters made two main errors.
“First, the polls were underrepresenting non-college voters because a lot of pollsters don’t have targets in their polls for education. And that’s something that a lot of pollsters have changed since 2016.”
“The bigger problem ... was population density. Any time we are doing a poll in a congressional district, we chop up the district geographically to make sure we are getting people from all parts of the state. The problem with 2016, though, was that voters in the least-dense places were going dramatically towards Trump and there wasn’t enough [representation] of low-density populations in the polls.”
Kue er says polls are now weighted to more adequately represent the views of voters in low-density (i.e., rural) areas like Rappahannock County.