Monday, December 7, 2009

The Unpopularity of Anonymity

In the last month we've been polling on a lot of folks running for office who aren't very well known and one thing I've noticed is that when we do favorability ratings on them it almost always comes out as a net negative. I don't think it's because any of them are really personally unpopular. It speaks to something larger than that- namely that voters are more prone to inherently dislike any politician they don't know anything about than give them the benefit of the doubt.

Out of 13 politicians we've looked at recently who 60% or more of poll respondents said they had 'no opinion' about 12 had negative favorability ratings. That's something to keep in mind when we start doing favorability tests on the Democratic Senate candidates in North Carolina with our poll this week- I imagine Cal Cunningham and Kenneth Lewis will start out in negative territory but it's nothing to get worked up about- they'll be suffering from the same affliction as all these other currently unknown politicians. There are more people who are going to say they dislike you just because you're running for office than there are who will like you.

Here's the data:

Candidate

Office

Favorability

Dave Westlake

Senator from Wisconsin

2/9

Fred Cullis

House from Delaware

3/10

Terrence Wall

Senator from Wisconsin

2/13

Chuck Purgason

Senator from Missouri

7/14

Vincent Sheheen

Governor of South Carolina

9/14

Stanley Reed

Senator from Arkansas

8/14

David Meeks

House from Arkansas

7/15

Scott Wallace

House from Arkansas

11/14

Robert Ford

Governor of South Carolina

9/21

Gresham Barrett

Governor of South Carolina

14/17

Tim Griffin

House from Arkansas

14/19

Gilbert Baker

Senator from Arkansas

18/15

Charlie Copeland

House from Delaware

15/19

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