PPP's new poll of Arizona offers some potentially exciting news for Democrats. Sen. John McCain sports a pitiful 34-52 job approval rating and holds only a soft 42-36 lead on his Democratic challenger, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, who is still unknown to 42 percent of voters. And funny enough, the last time PPP polled here—which was a full year ago—the topline numbers were identical: 42-36.
But it's not only the general election results that show promise. McCain's standing with GOP primary voters is abysmal. Even with them, his approval rating is a beyond-abysmal 35-50, and he leads loony-bin escapee Kelli Ward by just 36-29, with a variety of minor challengers in the low single digits. Toss them out and McCain is flat-out tied with Ward in a head-to-head race at 41 apiece. Democrats should seriously be looking at ways to knock those bit players off the ballot somehow, because if Ward were to defeat McCain, she'd start the race trailing Kirkpatrick 37-35 and would be just a disaster for Republicans.
And that's not all. The presidential data is very tasty as well. Donald Trump edges Hillary Clinton by just a 40-38 margin, with Libertarian Gary Johnson (the former governor of neighboring New Mexico) at 6 percent. No presidential election in Arizona has been that close since Bill Clinton actually won the state by 2 points in 1996, the last time it went blue. Arizona's often looked like a tempting target for Democrats, but it's always remained stubbornly out of reach. If it's somehow in play this year, that would speak very well for Kirkpatrick's chances.
P.S. In PPP's trademark style, the firm asked respondents if they thought this poll would be good news … for John McCain! By a 38-25 margin, they said it would not be—and they were right!