Poll: Governor race tight
Republican Doug Ducey is neck-and-neck with Democrat David Garcia in the race for governor, according to a post-primary poll of Arizona voters.
Republican incumbent Doug Ducey is neck-and-neck with Democratic challenger David Garcia in the race for governor, according to a post-primary poll of Arizona voters.
The poll — conducted by North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling on behalf of Garcia’s campaign — found that 44 percent of voters supported Ducey, 43 percent backed Garcia and 13 percent remained undecided, the poll found.
Of the 544 registered Arizona voters interviewed on Aug. 30 and 31, 40 percent identified as Republicans, 36 percent identified as Democrats and 24 percent said they were not a member of either party.
The firm did not immediately clarify whether those surveyed were “likely voters,” the holy grail for polling accuracy. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they were very excited to vote in November; 22 percent said they were somewhat excited; 17 percent said they were not that excited; and 5 percent were unsure.
Ninety-two percent of respondents said they’d voted in the 2016 presidential election.
Among conservatives, Ducey retained strong support, with 78 percent of Republican voters backing him. Overall, Ducey’s approval rating was 42 percent, with 45 percent unimpressed with his performance.
“I think this poll shows what we’ve known all along: that this is a competitive election and that Doug Ducey is in big trouble,” said Ian Danley, Garcia’s campaign manager.
Indeed, some analysts predict Garcia will have a better-than-usual chance in the Nov. 6 general election, given the national swell in progressive activism spurred by the Trump administration’s contentious record.
Garcia’s career as an education-policy expert also could give him a boost, after the #RedForEd walkout raised doubts about Ducey’s commitment to public education despite the teacher raises he’d approved.
On Aug. 28, Garcia captured about 50 percent of Democratic primary votes in a three-way race considered significantly more competitive than Ducey’s.
But Ducey has a history of outperforming polls at the ballot box.
The governor’s race is still pegged as “Likely Republican” by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. And websites run by Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, and political analyst Nathan Gonzales rated the race “Leans Republican.”
Campaign representatives for the incumbent governor — who has emphasized his record on jobs and border security as he pushes for re-election — issued a statement Wednesday saying Public Policy Polling is a “known Democrat polling firm” whose “biased numbers do not match our internals.”
“The more voters learn of Garcia’s extreme positions on border security, education and the economy, the further his candidacy will tank,” the campaign statement said.
Representatives declined to share internal polling numbers. They did not immediately respond to a request for an example of an outside poll they felt more accurately represented the state of the race.
Fifty-three percent of those surveyed by Public Policy Polling identified as women, while 47 percent identified as men. The firm used Interactive Voice Response, which replaces live telephone operators with recorded prompts, to collect results.
Live-operator polls are the most reliable at predicting election results, followed by IVR polls, then online polls.
Public Policy Polling holds a “B” rating with data-analysis website FiveThirtyEight, which says its results aligned with election outcomes 80 percent of the time.
PPP did not respond to a request for a more detailed data breakdown.
The survey followed weeks of attack ads directed at Garcia, along with a handful of campaign missteps by the Democratic candidate involving campaign finance and social-media posts.
It also coincided with the #InvestInEd income-tax measure being thrown off the November ballot.
The state Supreme Court on Aug. 29 decided the measure’s language “did not accurately represent the increased tax burden on the affected classes of taxpayers.”
The verdict reignited the anger that spurred the #RedForEd teacher walkout this spring, with supporters of the measure vowing to vote out lawmakers not sufficiently committed to public education.
Two schools of thought quickly emerged regarding how that outrage would affect the governor’s race.
Some believed it would benefit Garcia. Democrats could use the ruling to attack Ducey, they said, since the governor appointed three of the seven Supreme Court justices.
Others, including Republican strategist Chuck Coughlin, saw the verdict as a win for Ducey. They said it would allow the governor to stay “on message” in billing himself as a fiscal conservative unwilling to raise taxes.
The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.