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