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 | | 79 |
| Andre Bauer | Lieutenant Governor | | 65 |
| Henry McMaster | Attorney General | | 50 |
| John Carney | Ex-Lieutenant Gov | | 46 |
| Chris Nelson | Secretary of State | | 41 |
| Jim Rex | Superintendent | | 41 |
| Dennis Daugaard | Lieutenant Governor | | 33 |
| Elaine Marshall | Secretary of State | | 31 |
No comments:
Post a Comment