Encouraging news for those who want to see Sen. Chris Coons face a meaningful primary: Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, conducted polling in Delaware that found signs Sen. Chris Coons is vulnerable to a challenge from his left.
Data for Progress asked 528 likely Democratic primary voters who they’d prefer in a matchup between Coons and a hypothetical female candidate who was more liberal, about a third stuck with Coons, a third chose the liberal and a third were undecided. Once they were told arguments against Coons — his votes in favor of Trump judges were particularly effective — preference for a challenger rose to a 21% gap. But when they were given Coons’ record with a positive spin, his support went right back up again.
Given those wide swings in opinion when prompted in either direction, it seems that a big chunk of primary voters are susceptible to message advertising, presumably because they’re not all that familiar with Coons’ record.
There are lots of interesting details in the poll’s data. For example, the second-most-effective anti-Coons message was, “Coons is the co-chair
of a Washington-based group that acceptsfunding from the Koch brothers and has attacked proposals to expand Social Security.”
On the other hand, the data also show why Coons contorts himself into a bipartisanship pretzel: Prompting respondents with Coons’ bipartisan efforts elicited wide support. The report concludes that Coons is vulnerable, but its data also show that a more liberal challenger would have to wage a messaging war to take advantage of that vulnerability.