Thursday, December 17, 2009

Name Rec. Down Ballot

We've done polling lately on a variety of Lieutenant Governors/Secretary of States/Attorneys General and a Superintendent of Public Instruction looking to move up next year and we're finding an overwhelming theme that voters have no idea who these people are.

The only 2 out of the 8 we've polled on since Thanksgiving with greater than 50% name recognition were Attorney General Beau Biden of Delaware, who's probably known mostly for his family name, and Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer of South Carolina who was in the spotlight a lot over the summer because of Mark Sanford's woes and because of his propensity to get in trouble with a variety of different transportation modes (planes and automobiles anyway, not sure about trains).

This information is relevant because of the implications it has for candidate recruitment:

1) If you hear that so and so would be a great candidate for the Senate or Governor because he/she's a popular (insert down ballot state office here) you should probably ask the question, popular with who? More than likely the answer is a small group of party activists who follow politics closely, not the population at large.

2) There's not that big of a name recognition gap between low level statewide officials and candidates off the street who've never run for anything before, so if someone who meets the latter criteria has a better story to tell or better fundraising capability they may be a better candidate than somebody who's been in a low profile office.

Those things aren't breaking news by any means, but worth noting.

Here's the name recognition we've found for the eight down ballot officials we've polled on recently:

Name

Office

State

Name Recognition

Beau Biden

Attorney General

Delaware

79

Andre Bauer

Lieutenant Governor

South Carolina

65

Henry McMaster

Attorney General

South Carolina

50

John Carney

Ex-Lieutenant Gov

Delaware

46

Chris Nelson

Secretary of State

South Dakota

41

Jim Rex

Superintendent

South Carolina

41

Dennis Daugaard

Lieutenant Governor

South Dakota

33

Elaine Marshall

Secretary of State

North Carolina

31

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