Republican congressional candidate Marlin Stutzman is on course for a strong Election Day victory, according to a poll of northeast Indiana voters, who have a gloomy view about the direction of the country and say they are primarily concerned with the economy.
The poll sponsored by the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at IPFW found that 57 percent of likely voters said they will vote for Stutzman or already have; 32 percent chose Democrat Tom Hayhurst; and 7 percent favor Libertarian Scott Wise.
A different statewide poll found Republican Senate candidate Dan Coats is the favorite of 54 percent; Democrat Brad Ellsworth, 32 percent; and Libertarian Rebecca Sink-Burris, 7 percent. The poll surveyed 1,600 people who were likely to vote or who had already cast their ballots. The margin of error is 2.5 percentage points.
The poll of 400 likely and actual northeast Indiana voters has a margin of error of 5 percentage points, meaning Stutzman’s support could be as high as 62 percent or as low as 52 percent.
Asked whether they think of Stutzman as “more of the same” or “breath of fresh air,” voters described him as a mix of both. Stutzman worked for the district’s most recent House member, Mark Souder, for three years, and he has been in the General Assembly for six. But at 34, he is not a household name in much of the district’s eight counties.
They called Hayhurst, 68, “more of the same.” He was a member of Fort Wayne City Council for 12 years and ran unsuccessfully against Souder in 2006.
Almost three times as many northeast Indiana poll participants said the country is on the wrong track (71 percent) than think it’s going in the right direction (25 percent).
Political analysts consider the right direction-wrong direction a barometer that indicates the likelihood that the party in power will be unseated. When a majority of people say the country is on the wrong track, they are likely to vote against the president’s party.
Northeast Indiana voters were slightly more likely to vote for Coats – who represented the region in the House in the 1980s – than Hoosiers statewide. They chose Coats with a 26 percentage-point margin compared with 22 percentage points statewide. Coats’ lead over Ellsworth confirms what other polls have found: Ellsworth has an almost insurmountable gap to make up if he has any chance to retain the seat for the Democratic Party.
Sen. Evan Bayh’s unexpected announcement in February that he would not run for a third term took most people by surprise. After Coats won the five-way Republican primary, he outpaced Ellsworth in statewide polls.
Coats, who served in the Senate in the 1990s before leaving to become a lobbyist and then a diplomat, was better known throughout the state than Ellsworth, who represented the Evansville area in Congress for two years but had little contact with the rest of the state until his Senate campaign.
The survey found a marked difference in the enthusiasm between Republicans and Democrats. Compared with the same type of poll just before the 2008 presidential election, the pollsters said, the percentage of Republicans likely to vote or who already voted was far larger than likely GOP voters two years ago, when Republican presidential candidate John McCain energized his party less than Barack Obama excited Democratic voters.
“If Ellsworth could mobilize Democrats in the final week before the election, perhaps this substantial deficit could be trimmed,” the pollsters said of Coats’ 22-point lead.
The statewide survey was conducted by SurveyUSA Thursday through Monday.
