Messam in poll, but still an unknown

The good news for presidential candidate Wayne Messam is that he was included in a nationwide Quinnipiac University Poll.

The bad news is that the overwhelming majority haven’t heard anything about the Miramar mayor. The poll, released Tuesday, found that 3% of registered voters surveyed had a favorable impression of Messam and 8% had an unfavorable view.

The good news for presidential candidate Wayne Messam is that he was included in a nationwide Quinnipiac University Poll.

The bad news is that the overwhelming majority of people polled haven’t heard anything about the Miramar mayor, at least not enough to form an opinion.

The poll, released Tuesday, found that 3% of registered voters surveyed had a favorable impression of Messam and 8% had an unfavorable view.

But 88% said they hadn’t heard enough about him to offer an opinion.

He fared a little bit better among Democrats: 7% favorable, 4% unfavorable, and 88% hadn’t heard enough about him.

Messam announced his candidacy on March 28.

Of the 23 Democratic presidential candidates, Messam had the largest percentage of people who didn’t know about him. He wasn’t far worse than some of the others, including Montana Gov. Steve Bullock who entered the race on May 14 (83% hadn’t heard enough about him to have an opinion), spiritual author Marianne Williamson (83%) and U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts (84 %).

By contrast, only 11% of voters (and 7% of Democrats) hadn’t heard enough about former vice president Joe Biden to offer an opinion about him, and 8% of voters (and 6% of Democrats) hadn’t heard enough about U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Messam was among 14 Democratic candidates of the 23 who wasn’t picked by enough people to show up in the primary preference poll.

Biden had 35%, Sanders had 16% and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was at 13%. Eight other candidates were in single digits.

It’s far too early to know who will win the Democratic nomination, and early polls are notoriously bad predictors.

But the polling is significant

because it will help determine which candidates get on the stage for the first Democratic presidential debates, scheduled for late June in Miami.

There will be 10 candidates on two successive nights. The criterion involves receiving at least 1% in three polls approved by the Democratic National Committee and receiving contributions from at least 65,000 unique donors with

at least 200 donors in 20 different states. If more than 20 candidates qualify, both measures will be applied.

Quinnipiac surveyed 1,078 voters from May 6 to 20 using live interviewers calling landlines and cellphones. The margin of error for the overall survey was plus or minus 4 percentage points. The sample size was smaller for Democrats, giving the survey a margin of error of 6 percentage points.

Messam