Hoffman releases in-house poll showing big lead over Doheny
It’s been a bruising primary for Conservative-Republican Doug Hoffman, the Tea Party favorite who last year forced Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava out of the NY-23 special election.
His Republican primary opponent, Matt Doheny, has scooped up endorsements across the sprawling district — and he’s out-fundraised Hoffman by wide margins.
(Doheny is expected to pick up more endorsements tomorrow in Franklin County.)
The Washington Post went so far as to put Hoffman on its national list of fundraising “losers” for pocketing less than $100,000 in donations — less than one fifth of Doheny’s haul.
Now the Hoffman team is fighting back, releasing an internal poll dated July 16th claiming that he’s beating Doheny by a whopping 32% among likely primary voters.
“With less than 2 months until the Republican primary, and after a very heavy media buy, Matt
Doheny is still largely unknown to the electorate,” writes pollster John McLaughlin.
“Only 25% are favorable to Doheny. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the voters either have no opinion of Doheny (33%), or have never heard of him (36%).”
Several caveats are in order here:
1. This is an internal poll, commissioned and paid for by Team Hoffman, with no detailed crosstabs made available.
2. The poll apparently raised questions about which Republican candidate is more or less conservative. It’s unclear whether those questions — which can influence a poll’s outcomes — were asked before or after the basic question of Who would you vote for?
3. Hoffman had much higher name recognition at the beginning of this campaign. Doheny has been scrambling to establish himself with early TV and radio advertising as a viable option. He still has the better part of two months to build that name recognition and has the cash on hand to wage that media battle.
Still, if these numbers are anything like accurate, this figures to be a bruising primary right to the finish, and raises the specter of the Republican Party leaderships chosen candidate once again being drubbed by the Tea Party-Conservative favorite.
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the 11 GOP bosses in northern NY can’t afford the kind of loss that you describe. however, they certainly deserve it. why? because instead of backing someone with name recognition who could easily be their guy and has all the values they seek, they support doheny out of spite against hoffman. pure and simple, instead of winning an election, the 11 have chosen to make it personal. for this, they deserve another debillitating setback.
If the poll is anywhere near accurate, then it shows the disdain for the “establishment” candidate, be they R or D.
Also, most polls skew the results by carefully crafted questions, so don’t seem so amazed.
I’ve still yet to hear any specifics from either candidate about what they’d do differently than the incumbent. Yeah, I know one’s pro-life the other pro-choice, they both believe we need less taxes, fewer regulations, less gov’t, blah, blah, blah…….When will we hear specifics?
Anyone who actually believes a poll run by a candidate (especially one as ideologically-driven and substance-free as Hoffman) is either foolish or already a supporter of that candidate. I think polls in generally are MASSIVELY overplayed by the media, but to the very limited extent they are useful, let’s stick with the ones that are actually independent.