Ritchie up 4% in 48th Senate poll
Siena Research Institute’s final poll of the hotly contested 48th State Senate district race finds Republican Patty Ritchie preserving a razor thin lead she held in a poll one month ago.
Ritchie leads Democratic incumbent Darrel Aubertine 47 to 43%. I say the margin is razor thin because it’s within the poll’s 4.7% margin of error. Also, 10% of voters still don’t know who they’re going to vote for, which is actually up 2% from last month’s poll.
This we can draw from today’s poll: this race could go in any direction. A good sign for Ritchie is her strength among independents. She leads Aubertine 47 to 39% among voters with no party affiliation. She’s also holding strong in Aubertine’s home turf of Jefferson County (down by 6%), while she’s clobbering the Senator on her home turf of St. Lawrence County (up by 19%) and inching ahead in Oswego County (up by 6%).
Aubertine’s struggle is clearly against voters’ perceptions of Albany. He has a 52 to 39% favorability rating, but 80% of voters say New York State is going in the wrong direction. 48th district voters may be willing to punish Aubertine for Albany’s dysfunction – 50% prefer someone else to re-electing the Senator.
You can see the Siena poll cross-tabs here.
Aubertine has been forcefully making the case to voters that his experience matters, that his knowledge of Albany allows him to deliver for the district. It’s a perilous argument to make, given the historic unpopularity of the state capitol.
The outcome of the race will hinge on whether voters buy Aubertine’s argument, or whether they consider it the precise reason to replace him.
Here are my profiles of Aubertine and Ritchie.
Tags: election10
The problem with Aubertine is he advised local government officials to vote on matters (wind turbines, specifically) on which they have a financial interest. and he did that because he had wind turbine leases. That’s unacceptable.
Hey scratchy, one issue voters deserve what they get.
Anyway, the reality is that we should all think about the future of the North Country when Addie Russell would have the most experience of all of our electeds. Two years.
And Owens has only one year, besides Doheny will take him out. Look, there’s no John McHugh to be there for us, or even DeDe to navigate Albany. Without Darrel, we’ll be stealing scraps from Long Island. The fact is, Darrel has brought home more for this district than even Wright.
Integrity is more important than pork.
If the confidence intervals overlap, as is the case here, nobody is in the lead. The reported mean (47% and 43%) are no more likely to be the correct number then any other number within the confidence interval.
Great point, notinthevillage. It’s sparked a discussion here in the newsroom. I’m going to blog about it…