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Specter and Toomey still locked in tight race

Senator Arlen Specter and Republican Pat Toomey remain in a statistical dead heat 13 months before a potential general election showdown, according to a new poll.

A Quinnipiac University survey released Thursday showed Toomey leading Specter by a statistically insignificant 43 percent to 42 percent. The results largely echo a late-July Quinnipiac poll that showed Specter leading Toomey 45 percent to 44 percent. But five months ago, just after Specter switched parties, he held a 20-point lead over Toomey that has now been erased.

“Specter has more than enough time to reverse his fortunes, but being tied with the relatively unknown Toomey is evidence that this election has become a referendum on Specter,” Quinnipiac’s assistant polling director Peter Brown said.

The survey of 1,100 voters, conducted Sept. 22-28, may be slightly skewed because Quinnipiac typically polls a similar number of Democrats and Republicans, but Democrats now hold a 1.2-million voter edge in the state. Regardless, multiple surveys have now shown that Specter’s edge over Toomey has disappeared, indicating that the party switch has hurt him in the eyes of many voters and that the race against Toomey he bolted the GOP to avoid could be just as challenging next November.

In a general election, both Toomey and Specter win about three-quarters of their own party’s voters, leaving a critical bloc of independents to decide the race, according to the poll. Currently, those voters favor Toomey by a slight margin of 41 percent to 38 percent. But with a margin of error of 3 percent, the race remains a virtual tie.

And with only 13 percent of voters undecided, Toomey and Specter could find themselves competing for a dwindling number of deciding votes.

Click here to see the full poll.

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October 1, 2009 at 8:32 am

--Dan Hirschhorn

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  1. GOPHAWK

    Oct 1st, 2009

    Dan, ditto concerns from yesterday about tilting towards my side (GOP). The real world of Pa. — and by that I mean real vote results and real registration — does not match the poll. Even the % of ‘independents’ does not come close to what is reality. Sure, there are Ds and Rs who are independent-minded but they are not registered that way. We have very few ‘other’ party or ‘no’ party people.

  2. Jon Geeting

    Oct 1st, 2009

    A very small percentage of voters are genuinely independent. Most behave like typical party-affiliated voters. Many of the current Independents in the state are simply embarassed moderate Republicans who are too ashamed to tell pollsters they identified with the loony Southerners who now dominate that party’s delegation. Either Sestak or Specter has a decent shot at these voters. And Dems are going to run an aggressive voter registration drive to clean up newly-18 year olds and college students who overwhelmingly lean Democratic as is the case with Millenials on the whole.

  3. GOPHAWK

    Oct 1st, 2009

    Even though I distrust the magnitude of the trend in this poll, it does show that Ed Rendell’s quixotic quest to raise taxes on working people in the middle of a recession is doing terrible – and perhaps fatal – damage to the Democratic brand.

    For six months, we have had Rendell on the state stage declaiming his need to take more money from working families. The GOP has been declaiming the opposite. Not entirely unexpected then that the D brand is in free-fall and that includes the President.

    Our prosecutor needs two issues to win: one is corruption (check) and the other is taxes (check again thanks to Ed).

    Next year, the Rendell team is pushing to continue their favored position at the public trough by installing Dan Onorato who has his own pay to play issues at home. Corruption (check). Onorato also has implemented the largest tax increase in County history he has raised taxes on everything from beer to parking. Taxes (check). Dominant narrative for the campaign is in place.

    The Governor’s race always sets the tone because it has more spending on message. Toomey merely needs to conform to Corbett and the GOP reinforces the message and takes both races.

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