HARRISBURG – PennLive is reporting… With less than two weeks to go before the May 17 primary election, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is maintaining a comfortable lead in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary, while the Republican races for Senate and governor appear to be up for grabs, according to a new poll. Fetterman leads U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb 53 percent to 14 percent with 22 percent of Democratic voters saying they remain undecided, the latest poll from Franklin & Marshall College showed. State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta is a distant third with 4%.
Democrats
Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, left, is leading U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb 53 percent to 14 percent in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, according to a new poll released Thursday by Franklin & Marshall College. Since the college’s April poll, Fetterman has increased his support from 41 percent to 53 percent, while Lamb has seen his numbers drop from 17 percent last month to 14 percent. “Fetterman is in a good position. He’s certainly built on his advantage,” said Berwood Yost, director of the college’s Center for Opinion Research. Yost said that Lamb has proven to be an attractive and effective candidate in his purplish suburban Pittsburgh congressional district, but the dynamics of a statewide Democratic race are different, with the base concentrated in southeast Pennsylvania. “Those folks are more progressive in any number of ways than would be true in his district,” said Yost.
Republicans
On the Republican side of the Senate primary, TV celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz (18 percent) has not distanced himself from former hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick (16 percent) or conservative author and commentator Kathy Barnette (12 percent) even after receiving the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, who is scheduled to stump for Oz at a rally outside Pittsburgh in Westmoreland County Friday night. Those numbers are well within the poll’s 4.4 percentage point +/- margin of error. Dr. Mehmet Oz holds a slight advantage in the Republican primary race for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat, according to a new poll, but his small lead is well within the poll’s margin of error.Donna Fisher | lehighvalleylive.com contributor U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick is in a statistical dead-heat with Dr. Mehmet Oz and Kathy Barnette in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, according to a new poll. Matthew O’Haren | Special to PennLivePennLive
In fact, Oz (19 percent) and Barnette (18 percent) are “neck and neck” among Trump Republicans, pollsters found, but McCormick has a clear advantage (28 percent) with more traditional Republicans. Nearly 40 percent of voters remain undecided in the race and almost 60 percent of those GOP voters who have picked a candidate say they could still change their minds before the election. Other candidates in the race were polling at 5 percent support or below. “That is just a mess,” Yost said. Yost marveled at the ongoing logjam considering the millions already spent by the Republican candidates. “That none of them are at 20 percent is astonishing,” he said.
Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial primary field also remains a toss-up, with state Sen. Doug Mastriano (20 percent) leading former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain (12 percent), former Hazleton mayor and former U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta (11 percent) and former Delaware County commissioner and business owner Dave White (8 percent), and 34 percent of voters saying they are undecided. State Sen. Doug Mastriano leads in the Republican primary race for governor, a new Franklin & Marshall College poll shows. Sean Simmers |ssimmers@pennlive.com Other candidates were polling at 1 percent to 2 percent. The poll, however, showed that 53 percent of Republican voters who have picked a candidate are still waffling and could change their minds, and the leading candidates remain relatively unknown to about half or more of Republican respondents. Fifty-nine percent said they do not know enough about White followed by McSwain (54 percent), Mastriano (51 percent) and Barletta (47 percent).
Yost said he was surprised at those results but attributed it to the governor candidates not spending on media ads at the same level as Senate hopefuls. Trump has not endorsed in the governor primary, but Mastriano has echoed his unfounded accusation of voter fraud about the 2020 election results and built a formidable social media presence among far-right voters.
That effort has seemed to pay off with Mastriano enjoying a clear advantage (33 percent) among Trump Republicans, while McSwain (21 percent), who was nominated by Trump, and White (15 percent) are favored by traditional GOP voters. “He’s clearly a grassroots candidate,” Yost said of Mastriano. “He’s got a solid following.”
The percentage of voters who say they are dissatisfied with Pennsylvania’s election procedures has exploded since the issue was polled before the November 2020 election. Franklin & Marshall’s poll found that 52 percent of respondents said they are unhappy with the state’s election system, with 30 percent saying they are very dissatisfied and 22 percent saying they are somewhat dissatisfied. That response is startlingly worse than what the poll found in August 2020 when just 8 percent said they were very dissatisfied, and 16 percent said somewhat dissatisfied.
At that time, more than 80 percent of respondents said they were either somewhat satisfied (44 percent) or very satisfied (28 percent) with election procedures. That, of course, was before the 2020 election and Republican efforts to cast doubt on the results and the security of mail-in ballots. Yost said the “massive change” in voters’ thoughts on election procedures shows that the words of party leaders have real-world consequences. “It’s a clear demonstration that the things our political leaders talk about and emphasize do end up being important to voters,” he said.
