Arizona's primary is August 30, a date that Sen. John McCain needs to keep his eye on, even while trying to stave off a very serious challenge from Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick. That's because he's “at pretty serious risk of losing nomination for another term” according to the latest from PPP. Yes, he could very well lose his primary. He's underwater with Republican voters.
Only 35% of GOP voters approve of the job McCain is doing to 50% who disapprove. He's in particularly poor standing with conservative voters. Among 'somewhat conservative' voters his approval spread is 33/52, and among 'very conservative' voters it drops all the way down to 18/67.
He does have one advantage, even though he's only polling at 39 percent among primary voters: He's got four opponents, so the vote against him will likely be split. But if Kelli Ward (who's polling at 26 percent) can consolidate the anti-McCain vote, she could beat him. Right now, in a head-to-head match-up, they're tied at 41 percent each. And that's with Ward just having a 41 percent name recognition, while everybody knows McCain. Probably too well.
And if McCain manages to get through August with the nomination?
Even if McCain does manage to survive the Republican primary, it's not going to be a walk in the park for him in the general. His overall approval rating is 34/52, and he leads Ann Kirkpatrick only 42/36 in a head to head match up. The race is close despite Kirkpatrick having only 58% name recognition at this point. If Ward advances to the general election it looks like this contest will basically be a toss up—she gets 37% to 35% for Kirkpatrick so it's pretty much a wash.
It's worth noting that a sizable majority—61 percent—say Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland should be getting confirmation hearings, and 40 percent say that McCain's blockade makes them less likely to vote for him. He loses independents on that one—they support having hearings 65/21.
He's not going to be helped out with his "support the nominee" position on Trump, either, because a) Latino voters are going to be really motivated to vote this cycle, and are not too likely to vote for McCain; and b) Trump has some problems with Arizona Republicans, according to this poll. Just 65 percent say they're comfortable with the short-fingered vulgarian and he gets 68 percent support among GOP voters, compared to Hillary Clinton's 80 percent among Arizona Democrats.
Any way you slice, the senior senator from Arizona is not in a happy place. In fact, only 25 percent of the people polled by PPP this time around said "the poll will be good news for John McCain."
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