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Corbett leads Gerlach handily in poll, but half undecided
State Attorney General Tom Corbett continues to easily lead Congressman Jim Gerlach (R-6) in next year’s gubernatorial primary, but a whopping 50 percent of voters remain undecided, according to a new poll.
The Susquehanna Polling and Research survey released Wednesday morning showed Corbett garnering 36 percent of the vote, compared to 13 percent of Gerlach. But with half of Republican voters still undecided, the results will undoubtedly give more ammunition to the Gerlach campaign in its continuing argument that Corbett is not the presumptive nominee some party leaders have painted him to be.
The survey of 294 Republicans, conducted Oct. 7-12 by the GOP polling firm, had a margin of error of 5.7 percent.
Susquehanna did not poll the Democratic primary for governor.
Click here to see the full poll.
October 14, 2009 at 6:30 am
Tags: Jim Gerlach, Tom Corbett
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Tim
Oct 14th, 2009
In my opinion come primary day people will run back to the name they know and that is Tom Corbett.
Larry
Oct 14th, 2009
On the Corbett numbers. This poll doesn’t have a gauge of his name identification among the voters.
Corbett is a sitting, re-elected incumbent with high profile cases like bonusgate and has spent millions in public service announcements plus campaign commercials last year.
If say 60% or 70% or more of voters are “familiar” with him and still don’t chose him in a head-to-head with a probably overwhelmingly unknown Gerlach, then Corbett has very, very big problems.
On the flip side, if his 36% vote share represents the majority of those who are “familiar” with him, then that is a harsh verdict on the whole “Corbett won big in 2008″ argument for supporting Corbett in the 2010 primary.
I think the headline is bogus and as a sophisticated political blog you can do better. To say there is an “handy” lead by Corbett when half those polled are undecided is very misleading,and just not accurate. The story here is that two incumbent Republicans have such anemic numbers. Clearly, the GOP electorate is not fired up about their choices or is woefully unaware of their options.
Hey Dan
Oct 14th, 2009
Not sure how a guy who has run twice statewide and spent millions upon millions of dollars promoting himself, and as Larry says, spent millinos in taxpayer funded ads promoting himself, can only muster 36%? Is that a joke?
Why aren’t Republicans asking the right question – are we sure we should be clearing the field for this guy when no one knows who he is????
GOPHAWK
Oct 15th, 2009
I am coming to the view that these polls are not about the individuals but about a prolonged period of economic distress being experienced by voters. Things are not getting better folks and people are going to be less likely as time goes by to put themselves behind a candidate until they size them up. Incumbents are in a bad position, naturally, but even well liked political figures are going to encounter a lack of commitment.