Giffords Positioned to Win CD 8

Giffords has a 19% lead among likely voters in CD 8 according to polling by Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research. The poll, conducted Sept. 13th through 18th, sampled 500 likely voters with a MOE of 4%. It shows Giffords solidly ahead of Graf 54% to 35% with only 6% of voters undecided, and the remaining 5% split between the Libertarian and Independent candidates. Most striking is that even at this stage Giffords holds an absolute majority. In order to win Graf not only has to convert undecideds, but has to peel support off Giffords. The former seems unlikely, the latter imposible.

A poor strategic political environment contributes to the difficulties faced by Graf. In a Republican plurality district, Graf still faces ‘wrong-track’ polling at 57%, a definite sign of anti-incumbency. While Graf is not an incumbent, and the incumbent is, in fact, political hostile to Graf’s bid, and Graf is not closely tied to the President (whose disapproval is 49/45 in the district), a vote for Graf doesn’t seem likely to be seen by swing voters as a means to change the status quo (unless you are a Minuteman swing voters, I guess).

Perhaps most striking are the candidates’ negatives/positives.

Despite an unfortunate color choice by the graph-maker, Giffords enjoys a 51% positive impression among voters, while Graf is at just 32%. Worse still are the unfavorable impressions: Giffords has only 18% of voters who think ill of her, while Graf’s negatives considerably outweigh his positives at 39%.

Much of Graf’s dirt could be from the bruising and truly nasty primary fight with Huffman that Graf endured. Unfortunately for him, though positives may be vulnerable to negative campaigning, it is much harder to rehabilitate a reputation already stained. It isn’t likely that Graf will be able to erase his negatives, and he has a long a way to go to drag Gabby down to his level, and will likely wound himself further in doing so.

In all, Gabby is well-positioned for a high-road campaign in which she can react to Graf’s attacks in a purely defensive mode, refusing to roll in the mud with Graf. This is a good position for Gabby, because she isn’t at her best on the defensive, and Graf is a masterful negative campaign in-fighter. Gabby would do well to avoid too much publicized unscripted interaction with Graf, and stay out of any unstructured debates. She doesn’t have enough leverage to refuse debate altogether, but she does have a good position to minimize the number of debates, get them done with well before e-day, and to craft the rules to her advantage.

Given her clear money advantage, her superior numbers, and her positive image with voters, this race looks very much like it’s Gabby’s to lose. I don’t have access to all the polling data yet. There may be more that can be pried out of the details of the poll. If I stumble upon a copy of the full poll data, I’ll let you all know.