Kelly Ayotte’s had a quite a dramatic fall from PPP’s last poll of the New Hampshire Republican primary for Senate, when she led Ovide Lamontagne by 39 points. But Lamontagne may have run out of time to catch up. Ayotte leads with 37% to 30% for Lamontagne, 13% for Bill Binnie, and 12% for Jim Bender.
If Ayotte survives where many GOP establishment candidates have failed in Senate primaries this year it will be because she managed to be the Tea Party candidate herself. With the third of Republican primary voters who describe themselves as members of that movement she leads Lamontagne 38-37, a contrast to the wallopings folks like Trey Grayson, Sue Lowden, Lisa Murkowski, and likely Mike Castle have received with that group.
Ayotte builds on her running even with the Tea Party folks with a 39-17 lead over Lamontagne with moderate voters. Binnie actually finishes second with that group at 19%.
Although Binnie is best case scenario going to finish a distant third his numbers in this poll say a lot about where the Republican Party is headed. Generally viewed as the moderate candidate in the race, 55% of GOP primary voters have an unfavorable opinion of him to only 26% who see him favorably. That is telling when it comes to the ability of centrists to make their way in Republican primaries this year.
Lamontagne actually has the best net favorability of the candidates at +40 (56/16), followed by Ayotte at +29 (56/27), and Bender at +23 (42/19).
Lamontagne is effectively tapping into voters who think the GOP is too liberal, leading Ayotte 48-28 with that group. But those folks only account for 30% of the primary electorate and with the 48% who think the party’s ideologically fine she leads 45-28.
Unlike Delaware it may not matter from a general election standpoint who the Republicans nominate in New Hampshire. Numbers we'll release later this week showed Ayotte and Lamontagne performing basically the same against Paul Hodes.
Full results here
I'd say it is more likely that Ayotte hung on because she has 3 strong opponents. If this was a two-way race, I think she'd lose.
ReplyDeleteYou put up the wrong link. Your link is to the Delaware poll.
ReplyDeleteDid you do NH-02 primaries for the Republican?
ReplyDeleteLink corrected thanks. No House polling
ReplyDeleteHas Hode's standing changed any since your last poll of this race? Is he up, is he down? In your last poll he was trailing Ayotte by just 3 points.
ReplyDelete//Numbers we'll release later this week showed Ayotte and Lamontagne performing basically the same against Paul Hodes//
ReplyDeleteTom, you're such a tease. I don't know whether to take this as a good thing or a bad thing.
Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I'm going to go with "good thing" for now. I don't really see any scenario in which Ovide beats Hodes by a large margin, so possibly this means that Hodes has caught up to Ayotte by quite a bit. I guess the rest of us will just have to wait and see
If you don't mind me asking how old are you Jensen?
ReplyDeleteI live in NH-1 and received your poll and you indeed did poll it. Why are you not releasing the numbers?
ReplyDelete"I live in NH-1 and received your poll and you indeed did poll it. Why are you not releasing the numbers?"
ReplyDeleteWe didn't poll the House race, general or primary. We polled the 1st District because we polled the whole state at once on the gov. and senate races.
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ReplyDeleteLooks like GOP pollster Magellan is agreeing with you that Lamontagne is surging hard. They have Ovide a point higher and Ayotte two lower - both well within your margin of error and theirs. I don't think I'd count Lamontagne out of anything just yet.
ReplyDelete