A new poll shows Attorney General Jon Bruning with a commanding lead over the other Republican candidates and Democrat Bob Kerrey in the U.S. Senate race.
Bruning leads Kerrey by 17 points, 54 to 37 percent, and over half of Nebraska voters view Kerrey unfavorably after his favorability rating plummeted 20 points since October.
Kerrey has struggled to find his footing since changing his mind at the last minute and deciding to jump into the race right before the March 1 filing deadline. Since then, he’s been dogged by allegations that he’s a carpetbagger, since he has lived and worked in New York City for the past dozen years and had to quickly return to Nebraska to establish residency before filing as a candidate. The Republican Party legally challenged the legitimacy of his candidacy — based on questions about his residency — all the way to the Nebraska Supreme Court, which dismissed the case this week.
Earlier this month, a survey by Republican-leaning pollster Rasmussen Reports showed the top trio of Republican candidates all leading Kerrey by comfortable margins, but the Kerrey campaign dismissed the poll as biased in favor of Republicans. This survey was done by Public Policy Polling – a Democratic polling company – and it shows Kerrey trailing all three of the top Republican candidates by double-digit margins.
“Kerrey’s campaign rollout has not been a success,” said Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling. “There are two things a Democrat has to be able to do to win in Nebraska: peel off a lot of Republican votes and win independents by a wide margin. Zeroing in on the match up with Bruning, Kerrey is doing neither of those things.”
However, Kerrey’s campaign manager was also dismissive of this survey, saying it, as well as the Rasmussen survey, was an automated survey and did not survey “cell phone only households.”
“I doubt that even Jon Bruning thinks it’s a 17-point race or that he has won the GOP primary,” Paul Johnson told Nebraska Watchdog.
The pollster said Kerrey is losing 18 percent of the Democratic vote to Bruning and trails slightly with independents. The pollster said Bruning is increasingly looking like the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican primary, leading his closest contender, State Treasurer Don Stenberg, 46 percent to 18 percent. State Sen. Deb Fischer garnered just 12 percent of the vote in the poll.
“Jon Bruning’s chances of being Nebraska’s next senator are looking pretty darn good,” Jensen said.
The telephone survey of 1,028 Nebraska voters was conducted March 22-25.
Deena Winter reports for Nebraska Watchdog, which is owned by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.
