A PPP poll released Monday showed Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in the lead for the 2012 Pennsylvania Senate race over his GOP rivals. The poll showed Casey holding a 46-37 advantage over Republican candidate Sam Rohrer, and he also holds a double digit advantage over all other Republican candidates.
In 2006, Casey defeated current Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum by a 17 point advantage, but according to the PPP the 2012 race is likely to get a lot closer as voters become more familiar with the Republican candidates.
“The Republican candidates are pretty much completely unknown right now, with name recognition levels ranging from 16 to 29%,” Tom Jensen, a writer for the PPP wrote Monday. “One result of that is there are far more undecided GOP voters than Democrats. Assuming those folks come home once the party has a nominee, this could end up being a single digit race.”
Casey earned a 55 percent approval rating from Democratic voters in the poll, compared to 23 percent who disapproved of him. Overall though 77 percent of Democratic voters said they would vote for him over any of the Republican candidates in 2012.
““Bob Casey is probably going to have a tougher race than he did in the Democratic wave year of 2006,” Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling said in a press release Monday.
“But he’s still in a pretty solid position for reelection,” Debnam added.
The PPP poll was conducted between November 17th and November 20th among 500 Pennsylvania voters with a plus or minus margin of error of 4.4 percent.
