Politics

Arizona Senate race gets competitive as new poll shows Carmona leading Republican rival by slim margin

Alexis Levinson Political Reporter
Font Size:

The Arizona Senate race just got interesting.

A Public Policy Polling poll released Wednesday shows Democrat Richard Carmona demonstrating a surprising resiliency in a race Democrats seemed poised to lose just a month ago. The poll found Carmona leading Republican Rep. Jeff Flake by a slim two-point margin, meaning the race is statistically tied.

And on Monday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee announced its first independent expenditure in the state, suggesting Democrats are beginning to see the race as competitive.

Several September polls, including PPP’s own poll from earlier in the month, had shown Flake leading the race. But Carmona is now currently polling far ahead of President Barack Obama, who trails Mitt Romney by nine points among Arizona voters. He also has a 52-to-37 percentage point lead among independents and a commanding tally of crossover voters, with 14 percent of Republicans in his column, versus just the seven percent of Democrats who said they would vote for Flake.

Still, Carmona remains an unknown quantity in Arizona: 38 percent of voters said they were “not sure” when asked whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the Democratic candidate, leaving a fair amount of wiggle room for opponents to define Carmona.

The Club for Growth has already taken advantage of that opportunity by launching a $500,000 ad buy in the state and releasing an advertisement called “Know,” which highlights Carmona’s support for President Obama.

“We are where we thought we’d be” at this point in the race, said Andy Barr, a spokesman for Carmona.

Carmona is a “very unique candidate with broad appeal, [so] a lot of conventional rules about the state don’t apply,” Barr added.

PPP polled 595 likely Arizona voters using robocalls. Of those, 46 percent were Republicans, 29 percent Democrats, and 25 percent listed themselves as independent or some other affiliation.

PPP is a left-leaning polling firm, but compared to some 2010 and 2008 exit polls, their new poll includes a relatively high percentage of Republicans. In CBS News exit polls from the 2010 Arizona Senate race, 28 percent of respondents identified as Democrat, 36 percent as Republican, and 36 percent as independent or another affiliation. In 2008, a particularly good year for Democrats, there was no Senate race in Arizona, but 32 percent of those who went to the polls were Democrats, 39 percent were Republicans, and 30 percent were independent, according to a CNN poll.

The PPP poll has a margin of error of four percentage points.

A spokesman for Flake did not return a request for comment.

Follow Alexis on Twitter

Alexis Levinson

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel