Ted who? Is Alexander best GOP shot to defeat Hagan?
Former Shelby Mayor Ted Alexander makes the case that that polls show he has the best shot at defeating Hagan. The polls tell a different story.
Posted — UpdatedAccording to Alexander, the answer is "yes."
Jensen answered, "no."
Jensen's reply was based on the fact that all GOP candidates polled about the same versus Hagan. While Alexander was +2 versus Hagan, none of the potential GOP candidates trailed Hagan by more than 2 percentage points either. The better-known candidates are House Speaker Thom Tillis, Rev. Mark Harris of Charlotte and Dr. Greg Brannon of Cary.
In short, anyone polling even four points better versus Hagan does not have a statistically distinguishable advantage since the margin of sampling error in the PPP poll – plus or minus 3.3 percentage points – was larger than the lead.
We also have new data since the PPP poll.
More importantly, perhaps, Alexander is unknown by most likely GOP voters.
About three-quarters of likely GOP voters said they had no opinion of Alexander or were "neutral" towards him. Just 6 or 7 percent say they would vote for him in the primary, according to Time Warner Cable News 14 and WRAL News polls, respectively.
Similarly, fewer respondents rated Alexander as favorable at all, with just 17 percent saying they had a favorable impression of him. By comparison, 34 percent say they have a favorable impression of Tillis, while 27 percent said the same about Brannon.
While the data don’t support Alexander’s assertion, it did get him more media attention, which, I suspect, was his primary goal in the first place.
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