By Corinne Murdock |
Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03) is most favorable among voters for the 2024 Senate race according to a new poll, beating out incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and challengers Kari Lake and Mark Lamb.
Gallego led with a 19-point net positive favorability. Lamb and Sinema both trailed at a 10-point net positive favorability, and Lake had an eight-point negative net favorability among voters.
Noble Predictive Insights (NPI) conducted the poll, their Arizona Public Opinion Pulse (AZPOP). NPI surveyed over 1,000 registered voters in late October, estimating a three percent margin of error. NPI said in a press release that a three-way race with Sinema in the mix as an independent was “anyone’s game.”
NPI Founder and CEO Mike Noble speculated that Gallego’s strength came from branding, while Sinema’s weaknesses came from her divisive voting record.
“It’s interesting to see that Gallego is still ahead even as Republicans lead in the presidential and generic House races (R+8),” said Noble. “Part of that may be the presence of Sinema scrambling things for voters. But part of it may be Gallego cultivating a strong personal brand.”
In a hypothetical matchup between Gallego, Sinema, and Lake, Gallego led by a single digit. Democratic respondents expressed the highest preference for Gallego over Sinema. Republican respondents expressed a similar, though slightly lower, preference for Lake. Sinema had a near-equal division across Republicans, Democrats, and Independents for favorability.
In a hypothetical matchup between Gallego, Sinema, and Lamb, Gallego captured more voters. NPI noted that Lamb had “more room to grow” since 44 percent of voters had no opinion or had never heard of him.
With Republican voters carved out from the pack to determine Senate primary frontrunners, Lake led with 40 percent favorability. 33 percent were undecided, 14 percent expressed preference for Lamb, 10 percent expressed preference for Blake Masters, and four percent expressed preference for Brian Wright.
Masters is running for Congress, not Senate; the poll was conducted prior to Masters’ announcement of his congressional run. Noble said that Lake would likely pull most of the voters that expressed a preference for Masters.
“With Blake Masters no longer in the mix for the Arizona Senate contest, Lake is likely to benefit the most as his 10% share of support gets distributed,” said Noble. “Lake is in the driver’s seat in the GOP primary contest, meanwhile, Mark Lamb needs to step up his fundraising if he wants to mount a serious challenge to Lake.”
Independents now lead the state in terms of registered voters: over 1.45 million voters (34.6 percent). Republicans are second with over 1.44 million voters (34.3 percent). Democrats are third, with over 1.25 million voters (29.7 percent).
Libertarians and the new No Labels Party each have less than one percent of voters: over 33,700 (0.8 percent) and nearly 18,800 (0.45 percent), respectively.
The full poll results may be accessed here.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
