NY-Sen: Rasmussen Shows Kennedy Beating King Handily

Rasmussen. 1/6. Likely voters. MoE 4% (No trend lines).

Caroline Kennedy (D) 51
Peter King (R) 33

This is in stark contrast to the PPP poll from early this week, which showed King and Kennedy deadlocked (46-44 for the Democrat) while Andrew Cuomo was well ahead of the Long Island Republican with 48% to King's 29%.

From DavidNYC over at Swing State Project:

A rather different picture from PPP's poll earlier in the week, though it's a bit hard to compare directly since Rasmussen for whatever reason did not also ask about Cuomo. (They also failed to test DavidNYC vs. King.) I am a little mystified about Rasmu's choice to use a likely voter screen some two years before any election - how can they possibly judge that?

I'd add that there's a surprisingly low number of undecideds for this poll considering how far away the election is - only 7% haven't made up their minds?

The difference between the PPP and Rasmussen polls is striking (and also reflected in the favorability numbers - while PPP gave her mediocre favorables of 44/40, Rasmussen has her at a robust 63% favorable). The one dark cloud in this poll for Kennedy is that just 42% of New York voters consider her qualified to be a U.S. Senator, while 37% of voters consider her unqualified.

Both Rasmussen and PPP are good pollsters, so we'll have to see if anyone else is polling this race. Like DavidNYC, I find it curious that Cuomo wasn't polled, and I hope the next outfit to poll this race includes him.