Martinez internal poll: 16 percent lead over King
New Mexico Telegram
By: Matthew Reichbach
July 1st, 2014
http://www.nmtelegram.com/2014/07/01/martinez-internal-poll-16-percent-lead-over-king/\
An internal poll by Susana Martinez shows her with a 16 percent lead on Gary King for the general election.
The internal poll was first reported on briefly by the Washington Post.
The poll gives Martinez a 54 percent to 38 percent lead over King.
A big reason is that the poll gives Martinez a lead among independents and “soft Democrats.” Crossover votes are key to Republicans, who are outnumbered according to voter registration in the state.
The poll also shows that negative ads against King seem to be working, as his favorability is underwater. The poll shows King’s favorability rankings are 33 percent favorable to 39 percent unfavorable, compared to 62 percent favorable for Martinez to 34 percent unfavorable.
A previous internal poll showed Martinez’s approval rating at 62 percent. This is similar to a favorability rating, although favorability ratings tend to be higher than approval ratings.
The only private, public polling of the campaign so far has been a Public Policy Polling poll that put Martinez up 47 percent to 42 percent back in March. PPP is a campaign tied to Democrats, although this poll was not conducted for a candidate.
A poll by pollster Bruce Donisthorpe of BWD Global for the state Republican Party reportedly had the Martinez lead at 53 percent to 40 percent in mid-June. NM Telegram was not able to get the polling memo for this poll so did not write a post on it.
As always, internal polls must be taken with a grain of salt. Not because the data is made up, but because campaigns will only release polls that are favorable to the narrative the campaign wants to present.
The poll by Republican pollster Public Opinion Strategies was conducted June 24-26 surveyed 600 likely voters and has a margin of error of +/- 4.0 percent. The poll included 38 percent of respondents on cell phones.