Specter Well Behind Toomey in Pennsylvania GOP Primary

By CQ-Roll Call Staff | April 24, 2009 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter badly trails primary challenger Patrick J. Toomey, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll 13 months before GOP voters will choose their Senate nominee.

The survey, taken of 490 likely Republican voters on April 21, had Toomey leading Specter by 21 percentage points, 51 percent to 30 percent. Forty-two percent of respondents said that they had either a "very favorable" or "somewhat favorable" impression of Specter, compared to 55 percent of Republicans who said they had "somewhat unfavorable" or "very unfavorable" feelings about the senator.

The comparable numbers for Toomey, a former House member from Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, were 66 percent favorable and 19 percent unfavorable.

The 2010 primary, which will be held in May of that year, is a rematch of a 2004 primary that Specter won by 51 percent to 49 percent. Toomey, the former president of the fiscally conservative Club for Growth, has sharply criticized Specter for supporting some of President Obama's economic policies.

The only Democrat thus far who has declared a Senate campaign is Joe Torsella, who headed the National Constitution Center on Philadelphia's Independence Mall and who lost a 2004 Democratic House primary to current 13th District Democratic Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz.

CQ Politics presently rates the Pennsylvania Senate race as No Clear Favorite.

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Comments

Why doesn't Specter just throw in the towel and vote his conscience instead of the rotten republican party line? He's old, he's sick, it's time he retired.

Posted by: AmiBlue | April 24, 2009 1:50 PM