March 10, 2010 08:31 PM UTC

New PPP Poll: Hick up 11 on McInnis

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• by: roguestaffer

Details here: https://publicpolicypolling.blo…

Long excerpt:

John Hickenlooper is bucking the trends that have Democrats trailing right now in most of the major races across the country, and that makes him the early favorite to be Colorado’s next Governor.

Hickenlooper leads Scott McInnis 50-39. He’s up 48-34 with independents, making this only the third race we’ve polled since November where the Democratic candidate had a lead with that group. And he also has Democratic voters more unified around him (85%) than Republican voters are around McInnis (77%). In the vast majority of races we’ve looked at recently GOP candidates are doing a better job of keeping their party lined up behind them than Democrats are.

There’s absolutely no doubt Democrats are better off with Hickenlooper in the race than they would have been if Bill Ritter had tried for reelection. While Hickenlooper’s favorability spread is a positive 51/27, Ritter’s approval rating continues to be in negative territory as it has been for the last year at 38/50. That’s a 36 point net improvement for Democrats by swapping Ritter for Hickenlooper and given that it’s no wonder the party’s in so much better shape now.

McInnis’ favorability spread stands at 28/27, almost identical to his 30/25 standing when PPP last surveyed Colorado in August. McInnis led Ritter by 8 points then but it’s clear now that had a whole lot more to do with Ritter than it did with McInnis, given the 19 point shift in the horse race we’ve seen since Hickenlooper entered.

You can read the full tabs here (PDF): https://www.publicpolicypolling…

The sample size was 580 voters, interviewed called 3/5-3/8, with a 4.1% MOR.

I’m not going to get into an argument over what this means (especially given the Razzie poll that also came out this past week, which had McInnis beating Hickenlooper, 48-42). Suffice it to say that one of these models is right, the other is wrong.

With that in mind, at this point in time, I tend more towards the PPP model. It’s early in the race, and I think Hick has been more of a political presence in this state recently than McInnis (who left Congress in the early ’90s, nearly 20 years ago). Sorry – I screwed up. McInnis left Congress in ’05. (thanks to RedGreen for pointing that out.

The floor is yours.