Coons Gains Ground In New Rasmussen Poll
Rasmussen released a new poll today showing that Coons is gaining some ground on Castle. This comes on the heels of the news that Coons had a good fundraising quarter, raising $700K to Castle’s $850K (Castle still has a huge COH advantage $3M to $1M).
Congressman Mike Castle’s support has fallen below 50% for the first time in his race with Democrat Chris Coons for the U.S. Senate in Delaware.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Delaware finds Castle with 47% support, down eight points from late April. Coons gets 36% of the vote, his best showing to date. Six percent (6%) favor some other candidate in the race, and 11% are undecided.
In April, Castle held a 55% to 32% lead over Coons.
This part is interesting, but it’s Republican Rasmussen so I always take this with a grain of salt. The survey says that Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coons are tied and puts O’Donnell’s support at 41% (with similar name recognition and favorability).
Delaware has been rated Solid Republican in the Rasmussen Reports Senate Balance of Power rankings but on the basis of this survey shifts to Leans Republican.
Castle is being challenged in the state’s September 14 GOP primary by conservative activist Christine O’Donnell. Coons runs virtually even with O’Donnell who picks up 41% of the vote to the Democrat’s 39%.
The undecideds in this poll were 11%.
Tags: Chris Coons, DE-Sen, Mike Castle
That seems like a low undecided to me given the fact that both campaigns are keeping low profiles. Also, it is impossible for O’Whackjob to have that much support among Delaware Republican primary voters.
Impossible.
I think this poll is very bad news for Castle. Rasmussen points out in its post that 47% was what Castle was polling against Beau Biden when Biden was the presumed nominee.
Someone on Twitter pointed out that O’Donnell got 35% against Joe Biden in 2008. I have to think that 35% or so is O’Donnell’s ceiling.
I can see O’Donnell picking up more than 35% against Coons (in the VERY unlikely event that she wins the R primary). No matter how hard Coons works, he is not going to get greater name recognition by November in Delaware than Joe Biden had in 11/08.
Also, the passion of the tea partiers is a new factor.
Mind you, I see ZERO chance of O’Donnell beating Coons in a general election, and a ZERO chance of O’Donnell beating Castle in the primary (short of a macaca moment, or a stroke on Castle’s part, and even then…).
O’Donnell supporters are strange. They’re taking this poll as some kind of proof that O’Donnell can win in November. They were citing that nutty 9/12 Patriots poll (that had like 60 responses) as proof that she’d win the primary. Never mind that an actual vote by Republicans at the Republican convention had O’Donnell getting creamed by Castle.
I see ZERO chance of O’Donnell beating Coons in a general election, and a ZERO chance of O’Donnell beating Castle in the primary (short of a macaca moment, or a stroke on Castle’s part, and even then…).
Ha! True that.
The chances aren’t zero. They’re vanishingly small, but not zero, because turnout in Republican primaries is generally abysmal.
Most regular people I see don’t even know who is running against Castle. This is very sad. So many people are really burned out on politics.
But is it any wonder?
We need to raise Mr. Coons profile!
This is heartening news. I still think it is unlikely that Castle will be defeated but given the anti-incumbent mood of the electorate and Castle’s status as a “mega-incumbent” perhaps Coons can pull it off. The only complication is Coons himself is an incumbent, albeit at a low level and Markell ran as a candidate of change despite being state treasurer for 10 years so Coons conceivably can do so as a county official–especially against someone with a resume as long as Castle.