Polls Show Weakness for El-Sayed, Progressive Senate Candidates Among Women, Swing Voters

Democratic Party voters in several notable congressional districts and states went to the polls earlier this year to choose the most progressive person on the ballot as their party’s nominee. Minnesota lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan bested a more moderate congresswoman from the suburbs. Abdul El-Sayed narrowly beat out a center-left congresswoman. In Maine, the nominee for Senate, Troy Jackson, was chosen by hundreds of Democratic delegates after the previous candidate was dropped out following a sexual assault allegation. In an election year in which pollsters are forecasting a national blue wave, the progressive Senate nominees in all three of those states are in danger of significantly underperforming their Democratic compatriots, particularly with women and independents. In Maine, Mr. Jackson is running an avowedly leftwing campaign revolving around universal healthcare, ending all American support for Israel, and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We’re in a world right now that billionaires control and Congress has totally given up their authority, giving them everything they want while the rest of us suffer,” Mr. Jackson recently told members of the Maine AFL-CIO. Mr. Jackson is a slight favorite to flip the Senate seat and push out Senator Susan Collins, the moderate chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee who has made her independence central to the campaign. According to polls, Mr. Jackson is leading Ms. Collins by low single digits even though the Democratic nominee for governor, Hannah Pingree, is walking away with her race, leading her GOP opponent, Bobby Charles, by around 10 points in most polls. Independent businessman Rick Bennett is also running.A recent poll from Suffolk University points to key weakness of Mr. Jackson — he isn’t hitting Ms. Pingree’s margins among women and independent voters. According to that poll, Mr. Jackson is leading Ms. Collins with women by nine points, compared to Ms. Pingree who leads by 17. The chasm between the two candidates among independent voters is just as wide, with Ms. Collins winning the group by three points and Ms. Pingree carrying them by 10 points. The most stark contrast is in Michigan where Dr. El-Sayed and the Democratic nominee for Michigan governor, Jocelyn Benson, are ticketmates. For months, polls have shown Ms. Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, leading by nearly 10 points while Dr. El-Sayed is locked in a statistical tie with the Republican Senate candidate, Mike Rogers. A poll from Michigan State University and YouGov released on Monday found a wide gap between Dr. El-Sayed and Ms. Benson among voters, with Ms. Benson leading her opponent, Congressman John James, by nearly 12 points while Dr. El-Sayed is leading Mr. Rogers by just 3.5 points. Though Michigan State University does not release the crosstabs of its polls at the time it releases topline results, the director of the school’s polling institute says Ms. Benson is doing far better with “independents, Wayne County residents, Catholics, black voters, and ideological moderates.” Dr. El-Sayed performs better than Ms. Benson among only one group — voters under 30. A Marist poll released earlier this month also shows Ms. Benson performing better than Dr. El-Sayed among key demographics. While Ms. Benson leads her opponent by six points statewide, compared to Dr. El-Sayed who only leads by two points, she and Mr. James are tied at 49 percent among white women who did not go to college. Dr. El-Sayed trails Mr. Rogers by nine points in that category. Among independents, Ms. Benson is up by seven points, compared to Dr. El-Sayed, who is up by six. The Marist poll does not release specific data on the racial breakdown of the polls, though they do delineate between white and non-white voters. Ms. Benson is winning those non-white voters by 22 points while Dr. El-Sayed is carrying that group by 14 points. In Minnesota, too, the progressive lieutenant governor has been tied to the recent welfare fraud scandal involving Somali immigrant communities, which has cost the state billions of dollars. Ms. Flanagan’s race has become surprisingly competitive, with former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya trailing by around three points. Minnesota hasn’t sent a Republican to the Senate since 2002. A recent poll from KSTP and SurveyUSA found Ms. Flanagan falling behind the Democratic candidate for governor, Senator Amy Klobuchar. Ms. Klobuchar is winning that race by seven points, with a 17-point lead among women, a three-point lead among independents, and a 23-point lead among moderates. Ms. Flanagan, though, is up in overall polls by only three points, with an 11-point margin over Ms. Tafoya among women and an 11-point lead among self-described moderates. Ms. Flanagan is losing independent voters by three points. A Morning Consult poll found a similar result, with Ms. Klobuchar leading among women by 14 points. Ms. Flanagan in that poll is winning women by 12 points.More moderate Senate candidates in red states are not having the same disparity with their ticketmates as their leftwing colleagues. In Ohio, the nominees for Senate and governor, Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton, are running even with each other and are both favored to win their races, according to polls. The same is true in Texas, where state Representative James Talarico, the Democrat running for Senate, is narrowly ahead in the polls while the nominee for governor, state Representative Gina Hinojosa, is slightly behind Governor Greg Abbott. The leftwing Senate hopefuls aren’t just underperforming other Democrats on the ticket, they’re underperforming relative to the national environment. A New York Times–Siena University national poll — considered one of the best in the nation — found an 11-point lead for Democrats on the generic congressional ballot. In states with Senate races this year, 53 percent of women favor a Democrat compared to 37 who say Republican, a 17-point margin on average. On the generic House ballot, the gender gap is even wider, with Democrats winning 56 percent of the women’s vote and Republicans winning 37 percent of women, a 19-point gap.

Polls Show Weakness for El-Sayed, Progressive Senate Candidates Among Women, Swing Voters

Polls Show Weakness for El-Sayed, Progressive Senate Candidates Among Women, Swing Voters

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