The Washington Post’s Amy Gardner reports that Democratic Congressional Candidate Gerry Connolly says that he has a substantial lead over Leslie Byrne according to his own polls:
Gerald E. Connolly, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and candidate for the congressional seat of retiring Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), released poll results today giving him a 23-point lead over Democratic rival Leslie L. Byrne.
Connolly’s survey of 400 likely voters in the June 10 Democratic primary for the 11th Congressional District was conducted by Lake Research Partners and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
If the election were held today, 45 percent said they would choose Connolly, 22 percent chose Byrne and 1 percent selected Douglas J. Denneny. The survey did not include the fourth Democratic contender, Lori P. Alexander, who had not entered the race at the time of the survey.
The poll, conducted in early January, contrasted sharply with Byrne’s survey, done around the same time and giving Byrne a 39 percent-29 percent lead over Connolly. Byrne’s poll also gave Denneny 8 percent and gave Byrne a slight edge in name recognition, 94 percent to 92 percent, over Connolly.
Connolly said Byrne’s poll is questionable for a couple of reasons: It’s unlikely, he said, for Denneny to capture 8 percent of the vote this early in the campaign given his newcomer status to Fairfax County politics. Secondly, Connolly questioned the Byrne poll’s name recognition numbers given that he just spent $1 million promoting himself last fall in his reelection campaign for chairman. Connolly said
I’ll believe the independent polls when I see them.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Agreed- these early, candidate sponsored polls are nonsense. If both Leslie and Gerry are up so much- why do they need to spend $5-10K to tell them something they already know?
Of course- the key here is the undecided’s. Even if we take Leslie and Gerry at their word- I do not see either getting above or beyond the own numbers- in fact I would argue that they will probably split the strong D base which leaves a newcomer like Denneny plenty or space to capture the middle and bring in new voters.