Poll forecasts Onorato win

Nothing short of a massive exodus of undecided voters to one other candidate will stop Dan Onorato from winning the Democratic nomination for governor on Tuesday, according to a new poll.

The Quinnipiac University survey released Monday echoed other recent polls in showing Onorato holding a wide lead over his Democratic rivals. The Allegheny County Executive wins 39 percent of the vote, followed by 11 percent for Anthony Williams, 10 percent for Jack Wagner and 9 percent for Joe Hoeffel. Almost a third of voters are still undecided, but with Onorato enjoying more support than his three primary rivals combined, little time remains for any significant political “game-changer,” so to speak.

“If all the undecided voters went to one of the other candidates, Onorato could conceivably lose,” Quinnipiac University’s assistant polling director Peter Brown said in a statement. “But the odds of that kind of scenario are very, very, very long.”

The survey was the latest in a body of data indicating that Williams’ expensive ad blitz seems to have come up short in terms of moving numbers. Of the likely primary voters surveyed, 68 percent still haven’t heard enough about Williams to have an opinion—name recognition that is much improved from when he got into the race, but still isn’t much better than Hoeffel or Wagner, who have barely advertised. And his attempts to bring down Onorato through a spate of negative advertisements appear to have done just as much to bring up Williams’ negative numbers. Fourteen percent of likely primary voters view Williams unfavorably, compared to just 16 percent that view him favorably. By contrast, 42 percent of likely Democratic voters view Onorato favorably, 9 percent view him unfavorably and 45 percent still haven’t heard enough.

The survey of 951 likely primary voters, conducted May 12 to May 16, had a margin of error of 3.2 percent.

Click here to see the poll.