10th District Poll

The most recent poll surveying the congressional race in the 10th District shows Chris Carney ahead of Chris Hackett by 14 points.

F&M College/Times-Shamrock (Sept. 30 – Oct 5)
Sample Size = 713
Carney – 39%
Hackett – 25%
Undecided – 36%
*Margin of Error - 3.6%

Problably the most interesting feature of that survey is the undecided group. The fact that undecided voters almost polled higher than Carney did says a lot about the race.

Terry Madonna, who directed the F&M poll, noted that several factors appear to be contributing to the large undecided portion. While Carney being a freshman contributes to some uncertainty about his record, the Republican base seems to be unsure about Hackett (likely due to the divisive primary) and reluctant to decide. Said Madonna, "If these numbers showed Hackett with 80 percent support among Republicans, this thing would be over. That’s not what we’re seeing … He seems to have a problem with his base."

In fact, the poll shows that Hackett is only receiving 43% support from the Republican party with 39% undecided and 17% going to Carney.

The top three issues reflected in the poll were the economy, government & politicians, and taxes. Of those three issues, Hackett only pulled ahead of Carney on taxes with Carney dominating Hackett on the most important issue (the economy).

Mark Harris, Hackett's campaign manager, deflected the poll's results by revealing Hackett's internal polls portray a much closer race. Of course, I recall Dan Meuser touting internal polls which placed him ahead of Hackett right before election day.

However, National Journal's Tim Sahd agreed with Harris: "This is one that is just going to break late. If this is going to break for Republicans, it is going to break because of national politics … not because Carney has made a mistake or Hackett has identified a weakness in Carney. This is going to be a late bloomer."

[SIDE NOTE: I tend to enjoy polls and following them so I created a new poll tracking feature on the right sidebar. Suggestions welcome.]