NY21 poll: One ray of sunshine for Doheny
As Matt Doheny has pointed out through this year’s campaign, there is a new chunk of territory in the 21st district that wasn’t part of the old NY23 House district where Democrat Bill Owens is an incumbent.
Redistricting grafted a new slice of the North Country onto Owens’ old turf, including chunks of Essex, Warren and Washington County. In those areas, according to today’s Siena poll, Doheny is actually running slightly ahead.
According to the Siena cross-tabs, in areas outside the old NY23 boundaries, Doheny is attracting 40% to Owens’ 37%. That area also has a really high margin of voters who don’t yet know either candidate well enough to have an opinion — around 13%.
What does that mean? First the downside for the GOP: In a very Republican-leaning area where you would think a lot of voters would just stick to the party line, one might expected Doheny to be winning by more than 3 points.
Now the upside: It appears that in the part of the district where the two men are, effectively, running as equal challengers, Doheny is running slightly ahead and probably has significant room to grow.
Another wrinkle in the numbers is that the “new” part of NY21 appears to be measurably more conservative than the North Country as a whole.
In Fulton, Warren, Washington and Saratoga counties, Doheny leads 41-37 percent. But in the far northern reaches of the district — on Doheny’s home turf of Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence Counties — the Republican is getting walloped, losing 32-60 percent.
Indeed, Owens is faring better on the western side of the district than he is in his own greater Plattsburgh area.
I’d say the take-away here is that Owens is clearly claiming a big boost from his incumbency, but with new voters taking a fresh look at the race Doheny might have a real opportunity to make up some ground.
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That answers my question off the earlier post. Dohey’s getting the knee-jerk Reps, and Owens probabably the knee-jerk Dems in the newly-incorporated areas. Surprising Doheny’s not doing better, given Republican dominance there. I wonder if Owens’ good working relationship with Gibson, their current, but soon to be displaced, (Republican) Congressman may be having some effect.
Not very likely Doheny will do much better when the “undecideds” finally decide.
I don’t see much sunshine for Doheny as the fact that he does so much better in the new parts of the district (where voters are less familiar with both candidates) than in his home territory of St. Lawrence, Jefferson, and Lewis counties suggests that the more voters know about Doheny and Owens, the more they prefer Owens. That doesn’t suggest much room for growth for Doheny.
And I don’t buy the argument that the new parts of the district is significantly more conservative than the western end. While the western side may be somewhat more Democratic than the new parts of the district (largely because of the SLC college towns), Jefferson and Lewis county are Republican strongholds, which, I believe, went decisively for John McCain. Simply put, Dohney doesn’t connect with voters, something I attribute to his Wall Street background and stringent brand of conservatism, which contrasts unfavorably with the moderate Main Street background of Owens.
This is a big spread and I think it is all coming down to character. You figure the people in Doheny’s home county know him the best and he is getting crushed there. The new folks only know his platform and his relentless and impressive campaign stamina. If those were the only factors at play, Doheny would likely be winning in every county, but his BUIs, the cheating, the bizarre marriage and everything else add up. I am willing to bet the people in the new counties don’t know about any of that yet. I doubt Owens will go negative and expose Doheny’s character issues, but the PACs might. If so, Doheny runs the risk of losing his lead with Essex, Warren and Washington and then he would have a real problem. The Republicans chose to back a fairly controversial candidate and now they are starting to see the results of that choice. If the republican bigwigs holding the purse strings think this race is too far gone they might reallocate some of the funding that was earmarked for the Doheny campaign for more winnable races…if that happens, Doheny will have to pull a rabbit out of his hat to win this thing.