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