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New Lincoln Poll Numbers Looking Ugly (Updated!)
Wait, what's she smiling about?
The latest numbers from Public Policy Polling’s recent survey of Arkansas are out today, and they ain’t pretty for Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who’s commanding a tepid 36 percent approval rating in the state, with three potential GOP challengers—Sen. Gilbert Baker, Curtis Coleman and Tom Cotton—all within the margin of error in head-to-head match-ups. (Two of those dudes, Baker and Cotton, haven’t even announced they’ll be running at this point.)
Compounding the ugliness for Lincoln in today’s media mix is this sterling column from the Arkansas News Bureau’s David Sanders, who last week broke the news that Democratic state Sen. Bob Johnson was mulling a primary run against Lincoln. Sanders gets Johnson on the record talking about the whys and wherefores of his flirtation with higher office:
Johnson has concluded that part of Lincoln’s electoral troubles stem from the fact that she’s never become an adored Arkansas politician, like many of her predecessors who served in the U.S. Senate.
“Going to Washington doesn’t mean you have to stop being who you are — that is part of the problem, which adds to the pretentious phony-isms we get out of D.C.,” he said. “People don’t like functionaries.”
But, Johnson also observes the obvious. Her situation, he said, has been made worse by the fact that voters have become openly hostile to Washington incumbents.
“Sometimes candidates just get into a death spiral – an inverted roll – and can’t pull out of it,” he said. According to Johnson, Lincoln is caught up in a much larger problem, and a lot of incumbent politicians are in her situation.
“Death spiral”? Yikes. Hey, maybe this news will encourage another 8 to 10 people to jump into the race.
Blogger Jason Tolbert has more over at The Tolbert Report, as does Max Brantley at the Arkansas Times. Meanwhile, youngblood blogger Zack “Nick” Stovall says “Bah!” to you and your tiresome polling numbers, thereby affecting an air of hardened political cynicism not typically found in someone who only started shaving last week.
UPDATE: Sanders comes back with a blog post about Sen. Gilbert Baker, whom he says will jump into the race by announcing the formation of an exploratory committee on September 1. That’s Tuesday of next week, as of this writing. We’ll see. I hesitated to even point it up, so weary am I of Baker’s indecisive Hamlet routine on this question, so make of that what you will.
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18 Responses to “New Lincoln Poll Numbers Looking Ugly (Updated!)”
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August 26th, 2009 at 10:46 am
The real news in this poll is 33% identify themselves as Independent and only 29% as Republicans.
August 26th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Man, is Max spinning hard.
August 26th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Yes but when was the last time you saw as many independent votes in an election as there were declared independents in Arkansas…oh that’s right….never.
August 26th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Actually Teamster, that is not significant at all. Against historic numbers the Repubs are up. But this is your first campaign for Trevor Drown…so we should give you a little break..
August 26th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Oh WOW there is that name again,,,,,,Trevor Drown, being an independent voter and someone looking for a change from the old routine of two party R and D, that we never see change after election, its always just hot air and go with the flow as we can see from Blanche, could someone let me know how to get ahold of Trevor Drown, might be interesting to see what he has to say, been seeing a lot that name mentioned.
August 26th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
And actually Teamster Kevin Smith is only correct to a point. The poll means nothing because the pollster’s (democratic) real motivation was to cause two things, get the state republicans spun up to eat their own. The second was to get the pro-Lincoln corporate shills and other special interest groups at the national level something to worry about. Hence, Blanche would get more money. And since it is Kevin Smith’s first look at how the world works outside of Arkansas where the big boys play we will give him a break. Lot of time and distance between now and November 2010. Political landsape will have changed dramaticlly during that time. And in then end the only poll that counts is the election, where there will be only one!
August 26th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
The constant fake Trevor Drown comments have become ridiculously annoying. With all of the fake RTs and fabricated blog comments – his supposed supporters are making him look ignorant.
August 26th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
My gosh, Lincoln and Johnson and Baker apparently are all operating out of separate chapters of the Trevor Drown Handbook! Trevor Drown may be the only candidate out there who is actually incorporating the entire Trevor Drown Handbook in his campaign.
August 27th, 2009 at 10:43 am
[...] PPP’s approval ratings for Sen. Blanche Lincoln, released yesterday, were less cheery. [...]
August 27th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
[...] Public Policy Polling. This has Arkie Republican bloggers – from Jason Tolbert to David Sanders to David Kinkade to Kenneth Ryan James – eager, excited and blogging [...]
August 28th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
[...] week, another poll claiming Blanche Lincoln will be run out of town on a rail. Zack Stovall is unmoved. And the Tolbert Report makes like Matt Drudge with the unflattering [...]
August 29th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
I sincerely wish we could just get busy and find a true “Constitutional Conservative” to run against Ms. Blanche (Bow at Obama’s Feet) Lincoln.
I think if the Republican Party were to search for these individuals, and run them in every State. The Left would be history.
Wishing there were a real Choice in Elections. Not, Just a chance to vote for Liberal #1 or Liberal #2. I did vote in the 2008 elections and held my nose when checking the box for Mc Cain.
On the other hand, If we could get someone like Palin to run at the top of the ticket in 2012. I think it would be a slam dunk.
August 31st, 2009 at 2:26 pm
I’m kinda of late to this “blog party”, but I’m having to catch up. The way I see it, on the state level, Drown, or any other decent independent candidate, has a decent shot at the US Senate. As stated in The Arkansas Times, there are around 1.5 million registered voters in Arkansas. Of those, around 57,000 are registered Democrats and around 44,000 register Republicans. So that leaves about 1.4 million registered voters who aren’t affiliated with ANY political party. That tells me, if a strong independent candidate is brought forward, they WILL have a shot!
September 1st, 2009 at 11:41 am
[...] he is, indeed, jumping into the Republican primary for U.S. Senate to earn a shot at challenging embattled Democratoc U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln. Full statement at [...]
September 6th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Most of the stupid comments about Trevor comes from his buddy from California. I can’t wait to see him fail, because once all the facts come out about his past, it will be embarrasing for him and his one or two supporters!
September 14th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
[...] numbers show Lincoln polling slightly better than she did in last month’s Public Policy Polling survey, but still showing a somewhat anemic 43-49 favorable/unfavorable split. None of the potential [...]
September 29th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
[...] we’ve now dedicated ourselves to hyping every poll that comes out on the 2010 Senate race, let’s hype another, shall we? The liberal Talking Points Memo blog points to new polling [...]
October 4th, 2009 at 2:34 am
BOB JOHNSON FOR DEMOCRATIC SENATOR…
IF HE IS FOR THE PUBLIC OPTION, OR BETTER YET, MEDICARE PART ‘E’ ..MEDICARE FOR EVERYONE!