Keystone Poll (conducted August 16-21):
Casey (D): 44 (47)
Santorum (R): 39 (41)
Romanelli (Gone?): 4 (n/a)
(previous numbers from May 2006, pre-primary)
The Bad News: Yes, Bob Casey Jr. is only up five points.
The Good News: Rick Santorum is still a two-term incumbent who, despite an unchallenged ad blitz, still can't break 40%.
It's shocking, really: in May, 39% of Pennsylvanians had a favorable opinion of Rick Santorum, 33% unfavorable. So Santorum spent a reported $5,000,000 on tv advertising to improve those numbers, while his opponent remained fairly quiet, and those numbers have changed -- but now, only 37% of Pennsylvanians have a favorable opinion of Santorum, and 37% hold an unfavorable opinion. Same thing on job approval -- Santorum has flatlined. 35% believe he's done an excellent/good job, versus 56-57% fair or poor, both then and now.
What it means is that Pennsylvanians have watched Santorum for 12 years, and they've made up their minds about him. No amount of warm-and-fuzzy advertising (and honestly, it's really well-produced stuff) seems to help.
What's more, as of today Casey's front porch campaign is over and he's taking to the airwaves. Since Santorum hasn't been able to boost own nummbers, his only choice is to drag down Casey's. That meant funding and staffing the Green Party challenge, which is going to fail, and one other option -- more than ten weeks before Election Day, Santorum is already going negative. (See "Hey There, Hi There, Ho There").
Other notes:
- Casey's unfavorables rose from 13 to 20%. That's a problem, but slight, and his ads should fix that.
- As with Quinnipiac, Santorum is still getting bizarrely high 25% in Philadelphia, but he's getting killed in the Pittsburgh area, his home base.
- Casey still crushing Santorum among senior citizens, 49-34, and only Florida has a larger senior population percentage-wise than the Keystone State. By way of comparison, Kerry only beat Bush 52-48% among PA's 65+ population.
- 27% say Iraq is the big issue in the Senate race, 20% GWOT, 20% economy, 9% health care, 7% each immigration and gas prices. But what they want to hear the candidates "talk about" more is the economy first, then GWOT and Iraq.
- 46% say Santorum supports Bush's policies "too often"; 28% don't.
- Poll somewhat undersamples Philadelphia (9% of sample, vs. 12-13% of voters), and oversamples women. It's a 57% female pool, with the women breaking 47-34 for Casey, men 46-40 for Santorum (Quinnipiac last week had Casey doing a little better in both). In 2004, it was a 53% voter pool in PA, say the exit polls. Net, the two errors probably wash each other out.
Oh, yeah. The gubernatorial campaign:
Rendell (D): 53
Swann (R): 34
That's almost a three touchdown lead, and we're in the middle of the third quarter. I don't believe that a wide receiver can throw himself the ball, can he?