Liz Cheney’s Senate campaign is pouring cold water on a new poll indicating the Republican candidate is getting trounced by more than 50 points in her campaign against Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi.
In an interview with The Daily Caller on Monday, Cheney pollster Chris Wilson expressed strong skepticism about those numbers, saying the outfit has been wrong about Senate races before.
Wilson declined to provide TheDC with the campaign’s internals — saying, “I don’t want to get into a releasing-poll game. There’s no value on that” — but said the Cheney campaign’s numbers indicate the race between the two Republicans is much closer.
He said The Wickers Group numbers in October showing Enzi, the incumbent Republican, beating Cheney 69 percent to 17 percent “are very, very different than our numbers.”
“I mean we’re talking double digit differences,” Wilson said.
“We have taken a couple looks at the race and have seen it tighten,” he said. “We haven’t done anything since Liz has been on the air and I expect to see it fully tightened.”
Wilson specifically pointed out that during the 2012 campaign, The Wickers Group released one poll showing Ted Cruz badly losing the Texas Senate GOP primary to David Dewhurst 16 percent to 51 percent just weeks before the vote.
“This is an election that’s several months away,” Wilson said of the Wyoming contest. “I can also tell you she is much closer to Enzi today than Ted Cruz was to David Dewhurst at this time a couple years ago or than Mike Lee was to Bob Bennett four years ago.”
He also pointed out that new poll of the Enzi-Cheney was commissioned by the American Principles Fund, a conservative super PAC which has been questioning whether Cheney is sufficiently pro-traditional marriage.
Cheney said she supports traditional marriage, though the issue should be left to the states.
Cheney isn’t just taking fire from pro-traditional marriage advocates over the issue. Her sister, Mary, who is gay and is married, criticized her over the weekend for her opposition to same-sex marriage.