There have been several Franklin and Marshall polls over the past year and a significant difference between them and many other polling outfits is that the F&M polls have a much larger number of undecided voters. The F&M poll from Jan 18-25 had 50% undecideds. Terry Madonna and the Franklin and Marshall pollsters are on to something. This is what happens when one candidate switches parties after 30 years and the other candidate is relatively new.
There are several reasons for the large number of undecideds, but there are 2 major ones.
1)A) Democrats are ambivalent about Arlen Specter and
B)a significan't part of Specter's main base can't vote in Pennsylvania primaries.
Democrats, especially the activist base, the SuperDems have been campaigning and voting against Arlen Specter since 1980. Many Democratic Women have been mad at Senator Specter since the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings. To this day I have run into Democratic women who have not forgiven him. Specter's main base wasn't moderate Dems anyway; it was a combination of moderate Democrats, moderate Republicans, and Independents. While some moderate Republicans may have switched to the Democratic Party in 2008, Independents can't vote in the Pennsylvania Primary. Delaware County alone has 39,000 registered Independents and that's not counting the 4 other Philadelphia area counties or other urban areas like Pittsburgh and Scranton. It's hard to find a county by county breakdown that opens easily on the computers that I use, but the total number of registered independents in the state is about 1 million.
- Pennsylvanians who don't live in Suburban Philadelphia don't yet know who Joe Sestak is, and they are just learning who he is.
To be fair, Sestak's constituents in the 7th District don't know much about Chris Carney or Mike Doyle. This would be bad news for Joe if he had nothing in the bank. However, with 5.1 million in the bank Joe Sestak will be able to afford air time in at least the bigger media markets (Philadelphia and Pittsburgh). Also the Sestak campaign has opened field offices in Philadelphia (2013 Sansom St) and Pittsburgh (4326 Butler St.). These factors suggest that maybe the current polls should be taken with a grain of salt. The bigger question is what polls will look like in 6 to 8 weeks.