SurveyUSA Poll shows Luetkemeyer up 12 percentage points
A brand new SurveyUSA poll is showing former Missouri Tourism Director Blaine Luetkemeyer up 50 percent to 38 percent over state Rep. Judy Baker, D-Columbia, in the race for the 9th U.S. Congressional Seat.
The poll has a 4 percent margin of error.
There are not many bright spots in this poll for Baker. She is losing among both men and women and in all age groups in the poll. One striking feature of the poll is the low number of undecided voters, 2 percent.
Independents also broke for Republican Luetkemeyer in the poll, 44 percent to 36 percent, and Luetkemeyer has a higher favorability rating than Baker (38 percent to 31 percent) and a lower unfavorable rating (18 percent to 21 percent).
One factor that might be boosting Luetkemeyer is the District's high approval rating of current congressmen Kenny Hulsof. According to the poll, Hulsof's approval rating is at 48 percent while his disapproval rate is at 22 percent.
The poll also shows that Republican presidential nominee John McCain is carrying the district by a 60-36 margin, outperforming President George Bush who in 2004 won the 9th District by a 59-41 margin.
The survey was commissioned by Roll Call, a Washington newspaper about politics. You can find their article about the survey here. More information about SurveyUSA is here.
UPDATE
The Baker campaign has criticized the results of the poll. Baker spokesman Paul Tencher sent us the following statement:
"SurveyUSA uses a pre-recorded voice to ask random callers to use their phone keypad to record a vote. This makes it impossible to verify that you are actually speaking to voters. This method has led the Associated Press and other highly respected media sources to refuse to ever publish results from Survey USA. The inaccurate results also say that only two percent of voters are undecided with more than 60 days before the election. This is completely unrealistic in such a competitive open seat. This is a firm that couldn't even spell the Republican nominee for governor's name correctly in the poll."
It is important to note that two weeks ago, the Baker campaign released an internal poll that showed her to have a two point lead. The 9th district could be especially hard to poll, considering that it is especially hard to get results from college students, which are a critical part of the district's makeup. Luetkemeyer has not released a statement about the poll.